DP Martina Radwan is a German-born, New York City-based director of photography who specializes in documentaries. Her extensive credit list includes the docs Inventing Tomorrow, The Final Year, The Promised Band, Through a Lens Darkly and Saving Face. Her narrative works ranges from the Bahamian feature Rain to the thriller Under Construction to the horror film Train.
Martina Radwan
Recently she shot the Laura Gabbert-directed, Ruth Reichl–produced Food and Country, which premiered at Sundance. The film shines a light on America’s broken food system and features interviews with farmers, ranchers and chefs.
She joined the production in 2021, taking over from the original DP, Jerry Henry, when he had a scheduling conflict. We reached out to Radwan to find out more about her work on this film.
How did you work with Laura Gabbert? What direction were you given?
Laura and I discussed each shot extensively before and during the shoot. During the shoot I had more autonomy since we shot a lot verité.
Martina Radwan on-location
What did you end up shooting on and why?
We used the Canon C300 Mark II and the Canon C500 Mark II with Canon Cine Prime and Canon EF lenses, particularly Canon EF 17-55. I own the package, but I also felt that Canon was the right choice for this project — I really like how Canon renders contrast and color, and the camera’s latitude helped when shooting the exteriors.
What about the lighting?
We agreed to use available lighting only, except for interviews.
Are there some scenes that stick out as challenging? Can you talk about those?
We had several challenges. Due to the pandemic and the topic, we had to shoot outside a lot. With that, we had very little control, and the schedule didn’t allow us to shoot only at the beginning and end of day. We tried to schedule our midday shoots in a way that would avoid shooting in direct sunlight.
While shooting on-location, they only used natural light.
Large, commercial kitchens were also challenging. Kitchens are rarely visually pleasant since they are dominated by flat overhead light and tons of plastic tubs and containers. The challenge is to make it look clean and appealing. You want the audience to get hungry while watching these wonderful meals being prepared.
Looking back on the film, would you have done anything different?
Honestly, I am not sure. I am happy with how things worked out.
Any tips for young cinematographers?
Don’t be afraid to experiment. It’s hard to do that on the job, but if it works for the story, most directors will embrace it.