90 Seconds for “A Forgotten Emergency” and Doctors Without Borders

Shot in April 2022 and released in following July, just before the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision in the US, "A Forgotten Emergency" is the Master Thesis film of Franziska Heinemann. A color grader for years, Franziska was studying at Hamburg Media School, and chose NGOs communication and the impact of films as the subject matter of her diploma thesis. After reaching out to Doctors Without Borders and agreeing with them on the urgent topic of women dying due to unsafe abortion, Franziska got director Juliane Taudt and cinematographer Josua Stäbler on board to shoot this allusive yet impactful short film. "It was quite the right timing unfortunately.", as Franziska said introducing what was a passion project for every member of the crew, shot in two days on location in Berlin with an Arriflex 235 and ARRI/ZEISS Master Primes.

Franziska: Maybe I can throw in some facts. Unsafe abortion remains one of the five leading causes of maternal mortality, even though it is mostly preventable. Doctors Without Borders advocates for access to contraception and safe abortion as basic health care. It was so hard to find women to interview, because of stigmatization and taboos. When we had stories and started talking about pictures with Josua, it was clear to us that we didn’t want to show blood or any direct action. It had to be subtle.

Josua: For me it’s an important topic, but also a difficult topic to talk about in a film. We want to be honest and show its importance and cruelty, whilst not hurting women who experienced such things. We needed to show things visually, but decently. There is a fine line, we had to remain abstract enough not to hurt any feelings or trigger any traumas, and I think it was one of the biggest challenges of this project. I didn’t know anything about the topic beforehand, to be honest. There isn’t much communication about the fact that you often can’t find any doctor to help, and there is no other solution.
 

What material did you have to start with? We can’t say there is a plot. It’s more about atmosphere and feelings.

Franziska: As a creative producer I enjoy not only taking part to the producing and team managing side but also developing and polishing the idea with the other departments. With all the films and information gathered from our research I created a "mood film" very early to visualize the pacing and feeling of the film and be the guideline for further visual and sound development. This mood film was great for Juliane, Josua and me to throw ideas around and build onto.

Josua: Juliane and Franziska shared a couple of sentences whith me about this topic. There was no script, but Juliane had nice ideas and Franziska found this really cool location in Berlin, where we were able to create three different homes. From there we slowly found our voice, and Juliane came up with the idea of the moth as a metaphor. It was a work in progress. Still on the shoot our really good actors allowed us to improvise on set. Juliane and I came up with different new shots, like the opening Steadicam shots. The rest was more or less improvised handheld. I really like this style of working, especially with a topic like this. It has to be a bit abstract; it gives room for imagination.

Franziska: Yet you had to be organized, since we shot analog. Even if we had some freedom – Alina, our main actor, just told me yesterday that Juliane created such a safe space of intimacy that she could really play that ending scene. 

Josua: We almost had a closed set, with the minimal amount of people in the room so the actors can feel free. We lit the spaces 360°, so we could shoot documentary style, without any lamps in our way, only lit from outside through the windows, and with minimal lighting inside to have this freedom and give the actors some space.

Did you want to shoot on film from the start?

Josua: I think it was actually Franziska’s idea!

Franziska: Yes, but we discussed a lot about our motivation to shoot analog. Maybe Josua can say something about the magic of film.

Josua: Yes, with no money it’s hard but the idea to shoot on film grew early on. We thought it was the right medium, because even if we allow ourselves to improvise on 360° lit sets, we want to limit ourselves in some sort of way. I think we had four or five rolls in total, like 20 minutes of raw footage. This limitation forces you to talk about the stuff instead of letting the camera roll and solve it in the edit: we talked about the scene we wanted to shoot with the minutes we had left in the mag. I really liked this limitation: I think it makes you more creative. And also, because of the intimate topic, we wanted to be close to the women, we wanted to see the skin, as natural and as beautiful as possible. Here, for me, analog film is still the right medium. You need to be disciplined in terms of lighting and communication on set. We had such an organized set because we needed it. For me, since it’s a passion project, I always like to challenge myself. It’s always a technical challenge, you need to calculate the F-stops correctly, you cannot make any mistake when you shoot analog, and as the DP, you’re the only one who can see a sharp image through the viewfinder, the others only see this small bad SD image. 

Franziska: There was a special atmosphere on set.

Josua: There was. The actors could hear the camera running, everyone calms down. Every set should be like this, on analog there is way more discipline. It was a Arriflex 235, to go on the Steadicam as well, and we shot on 500T filmstock. I like this filmstock, I don’t even use conversion filters with it, because I like doing the white balance in scanning, it gives really warm skin tones. It’s balanced for tungsten, but we lit with daylight mostly. That’s my little trick, I like to shoot tungsten film in a daylight setting. And we shot with beautiful ARRI/ZEISS Master Primes.

Was the close focus one of the reasons? You said you wanted to get close to the skins.

Josua: It was one of the reasons yes. 

Because regarding skin details and tones, and sharpness, you could have made other choices, couldn’t you…

Josua: To be honest, when I shoot on film, I tend to use the best lenses out there, in terms of resolution, sharpness, consistency throughout the lens set. For Super 35, the Master Primes are the best lenses out there in my opinion, technically; and aesthetically I really like them. I also sometimes use them on digital, but I tend to use more vintage lenses. When I shoot analog, I want to give the film the most resolution possible, so that the emulsion on the film can do its magic. I like the Master Primes’ close focus of plus or minus 25 cm, and the T1.3 aperture. I think we shot all shots wide open. With the wide-angle lenses, close to your subject, it feels really intimate; with this beautiful bokeh, only the skin is in focus, you’re there with the actor. I use some diffusion, 1/8 of a glimmer glass, just to make the skin a little bit more glowy and to smoothen the edges of the high lights.

Ok, so let’s give a shoutout to your focus puller!

Josua: Yes! Samuel Emmer. He is amazing. I do most of my analog projects with him. It’s tough… At T1.3, that close, it’s tough. But every shot was in focus. To be honest, when I got closer than half a meter, I would pull the focus myself. That close, you can’t see the difference between 45 cm and 47 cm other than through the viewfinder. It’s not humanly possible to pull focus under half a meter without seeing anything. But all the rest, the Steadicam moves and complicated push-ins, he mastered perfectly, even at T1.3. We had the 12mm on the Steadicam; we also used the 14mm and the 21mm quite often for these close-ups, 32mm for medium shots, and the 65mm and the 100mm macro. Quite a limited set, but I like to limit myself to four or five lenses. 

Nothing like limitations to stimulate creativity… Tell me more about how you lit the sets. You said, mostly from outside. So, just a few practical lights inside?

Josua: Yes. We had three rooms for three “processes”. For the bedroom we used practicals and just a small Aladdin 2x4 Led panel as a top light. The keylight came from the outside. For the medicine and the butterfly, we only used a Source 4 with a projection lens from outside with negative fill inside, to get a hard light next to the mirror. For the kitchen we used a practical tube and an HMI outside. So, quite minimal lighting, with a bit of bounce and negative fill inside, and some smoke.

Franziska: We have to give a shoutout to our gaffer Thorben Winkler, who was very creative. He was the only lighting technician who could and was willing to do this shoot with such limitations in every aspect… He found the practical of the kitchen on Ebay, for example.

How did you do with the moth?

Josua: we have to give credit to Max!

Franziska: Yes, Maximilian Hirsch, he was our set designer. He drove to a guy who had butterflies, and also checked if there is no harm done to them. Max could talk all day about the butterflies.

Josua: I feel this is also part of my excitement of shooting film: you put the moth on the mirror, and you don’t know if it’s flying away or staying there, should I press the trigger now? Is this the perfect placement of the moth, or is there a better one? This moment is really cool. I think the most technically difficult shot was capturing those drips of water on the window, though it’s just half a second shot. It’s a clear substance in front of a clear glass… We backlit it and tried to follow this water around the window, and it was extremely difficult with focus and tilting, but it’s the same excitement: do I press the trigger now, is it the perfect drop of water? Should we waste two meters of film? Same with the moth. It was so concentrated on set; it was really cool to capture those little animals. 

Franziska, you were also the colorist of the film: what did your job comprise of?

Franziska: The processing and scanning were done by Cinegrell in Zurich. Obviously, the captured pictures were already nice. The combination of filmstock and the Master Primes gave very soft skin tones, in a way that is difficult to achieve in digital. The MP have a really nice rendering of the skin, which matches my eye. I didn’t have to tweak any color in skin tones, like I have to do with other cameras and lenses. I did minor changes like, for example in the last shot, changing the color of the wall so that the viewer focuses on Alina. My main work was to kind of sculpture the women out of the pictures. I think with Josua’s pictures and Thorben’s light you don’t have to do too much as a colorist. It was really only about making the characters pop more. Everything I needed was already there in the pictures.

Josua: I will give this credit to the beauty of analog film. When dailies came back from scanning, I felt like there was not much left to do. I think it made Franziska’s job easier, working on the nuances and making the person more present in the frame. It’s the more advanced skill in my opinion, working on the details, and the analog film gave a good base for that.
 

Franziska: I sometimes played with sharpness and a little vignetting. But as Josua said, a good analogy to describe our project was a kind of unpretentious approach, like Juliane did in her directing, in what she said to the actors and what Josua told his crew. The whole teamwork in the whole process was always about little nuances. Nobody was doing a big show, with big camera movements, it was little, tiny things adding together. Sometimes I think it’s even harder to do this kind of color grading, as Josua said: you have to take yourself back, look at your picture, and see what you can really bring out, and what you shouldn’t touch because it’s already beautiful.

So, Franziska, you are both a colorist and a producer?

Franziska: I’ve been a colorist for many years, but I use my free time to commit with NGOs and produce. Ideally it would be 50% color grading, 50% passion project, and I think for Josua it’s the same, shooting commercials and environmental documentaries or other projects like that.

Josua: We are always trying to find a balance. I find shooting commercials quite rewarding technically, I lean a lot about my craft, and I often have all the budget I need to try this new lighting technique or camera, but I like to use what I learn in passion projects, short films, and documentaries. I enjoy the balance between those two worlds, and the mixture of being creative but also the technical side of things, the communication on set… Telling stories through my pictures, it’s my dream job.

How has the feedback been, since the film is finished, and you’ve been showing it around?

Franziska: It’s quite boring, we only have positive reactions! [laughters] When I coproduced a documentary about sea rescue there had been discussions, but here it’s only positive. Doctors Without Borders released the film on their social media last year; nowadays they use it with background information in safe spaces where doctors and nurses can talk with women and share their experiences. Unwanted pregnancy shouldn’t be a death sentence, that’s what we want to say with this movie.

A 4 minutes BTS video is available on Vimeo.

The director: www.juliane-taudt.com

The cinematographer: www.josuastaebler.com

The producer and colorist: www.franziskaheinemann.de