1
Kate McCullough, among
the best Irish cinematographers of her generation, risks jarringly dramatic contrasts between light and shade in her academy-ratio images (it is time for a treatise on why that narrow frame is so in fashion again).
2
Shot in a 4:3 “Academy” aspect ratio,
the squared-off framing and boxed-in quality of
the imagery shows us
the limits of a child’s world. Cáit can roam, but
the spaces she moves through are always bordered by darkness.
There is some nostalgia in
the framing of
the film, but there’s also a kind of lived-in realism. This is
the visual language of memories. You watch a recording of that time and it’s in
the same aspect ratio, on video cassette or cine film.
The mind’s eye recalls lives and experience of this era as a series of these squares.
3
The film is shot in
the classic Academy-format and despite Bairéads wonderful use of this aspect ratio, one wishes for
the shy and introverted 9 years old
girl a temporary escape into dreams in Cinema scope.
4
Shooting in full-frame Academy ratio, director of photography Kate McCullough captures Cáit moving between pale yellow doorways, squaring
the difference between this place, her home, and
the discomfort that lies in between.
5
Director Colm Bairéad: "I’m very interested in
the question of point of view in film, and this film is very much a first-person narrative. We were trying to mirror Foster, and Foster is written in first person; that’s one of
the reasons Foster feels very cinematic, you’re literally in this
girl’s shoes
the whole time. Our biggest question was, how do we transpose that to
the language of film? Kate used
the Academy ratio; it’s a narrower frame. It is an interesting way of holding this one character, it gives a first-person approach, but in this case, it’s a first-person narrative about a person who doesn’t understand
the world yet. It is also a great frame to situate
the audience in this time in our past."
**************
Quote sources:
1 =
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film ... -1.4874638
2 =
https://dublininquirer.com/2022/05/18/a ... %20realism.
3 =
https://shomingekiblog.blogspot.com/202 ... rl-by.html
4 =
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/ ... ly-outcast
5 =
http://www.movies.ie/an-cailin-ciuin-in ... m-bairead/
16:9 is IMO 
(Back when I went to 
