The Land tells the story of one summer in the life of four teenagers who try to escape the grim reality of their surroundings through roaming their neighbourhood on skateboards.

DP Steven Holleran grew up as an outdoor-loving kid in north county San Diego, passionate about surfing, skateboarding, and nature photography. After graduating from Bowdoin College, Holleran won a Thomas Watson Fellowship and used the grant to fund a documentary feature about over-fishing in the South Pacific, travelling for a year to New Zealand, Samoa and Chile. He then built upon this incredible experience while attending USC’s MFA production programme, where he met The Land’s director and writer, Steven Caple Jr. We caught up with Steve Holleran after The Land’s debut at Sundance.

How did you end up being the cinematographer for The Land?
Steven Caple Jr. and I became close friends at USC and I was able to read early versions of the script and hear his ideas. We developed a trust and a shared vision and about two years ago we shot a short in Los Angeles, The Land of Misfits, which captured the visual sense of the film we wanted to make. I had been shooting commercials since film school and this was the perfect opportunity to shoot my first feature.

Why did you choose to shoot ARRIRAW with the ALEXA as your main camera?
I knew from early on that I wanted to shoot anamorphic due to the format’s unique depth of field and separation between foreground and background. It gave me the ability to draw the viewer’s focus to the boys but also capture the essence of the world around them with all its texture, colour and light. The footage has a subtle dimensionality to it that separates the boys from their surroundings.

Because about 2/3rds of the movie takes place at night and we were on a very tight budget, I needed fast lenses so the ARRI/Zeiss Anamorphics were ideal. This naturally led us to want to shoot with the ALEXA XT Plus so we could take advantage of the 4:3 sensor. I would also be shooting handheld a lot so I needed a camera that was very comfortable on my shoulder. And again, because of all the night shoots and limited lighting budget, I knew that ARRIRAW would give me the latitude I needed to capture my vision and the flexibility to manipulate the image in the DI.

Tell us about shooting in Cleveland?
That’s a very different environment from Southern California!I really feel that Cleveland is a silent character in the movie. There’s grandiose architecture, abandoned steelyards and warehouses and neighbourhoods where every other house is empty. We did a three week location scout prior to the shoot and I stayed with Steven and his extended family. I really got a feel for the city, and the neighbourhoods Steven grew up in – we explored derelict warehouses, schools, and even an abandoned mall. At the end of the three weeks, we had identified almost all our locations and I had a really good sense of the environment that we wanted to capture. We found some amazing skateboarding locations – an 80-acre skate park in the woods called Skatopia, which really was a skate anarchists paradise – and an old disused warehouse that offered up some amazing skate opportunities. One of the benefits of shooting RAW with the ALEXA was the extra flexibility it gave me in terms of lighting in these locations.




How did you capture the scenes of the boys skateboarding?
It was important to the story to immerse the audience in the boys’ world. I also wanted to evoke the feeling of freedom that skateboarding gave them, in contrast to their difficult everyday lives. I quickly realised that the best way to do that was to shoot them from a skateboard – in other words, I would skate behind them, next to them and in front of them.

My background as a surfer and skateboarder came in handy while shooting these scenes. The many hours I spent skateboarding in my youth were very useful. I had a special U-shaped top handle created for the B-Cam, which allowed me to hold the camera with both hands while I was on my skateboard. Steven and I decided to shoot a variety of frame rates up to 120 fps to give it a dreamlike quality.

What were some of the challenges of the shoot?
Some of our locations were very tight, which made shooting with anamorphics particularly challenging. One of them, Uncle Steve’s Diner was incredibly narrow, making fitting the ALEXA, 4 to 6 actors and the crew, into a tiny space, very tough, but I think it was definitely worth it for the authenticity. Physically the shoot was also very difficult for me – I had a fully-loaded ALEXA PLUS on my shoulder, weighing around 40 pounds every day, and when I was shooting the skateboard sequences I was working with the RED DRAGON on my skateboard. And it was summer – temperatures were in the upper 80s with high humidity. At the end of every day I was drained! We also often had multiple location moves in one day, which was a logistical challenge, particularly with some of the locations – an almost inaccessible rooftop, a street festival and an abandoned subway are just some examples. In the end, having the opportunity to spend a large amount of time in pre-production living in and scouting a world I knew little about, gave me invaluable insight into the characters of our film and the motivations that made them tick.