The Falcon and the Winter Soldier went off with quite a bang, with lots of high flying action, a potent message about race in the United States, plenty of setups for the future of the MCU, and by giving us an all new Captain America. It wasn’t a perfect series by any measure (we had some nitpicks!), but it was still incredibly fun and stunningly well made. In this Malaysian exclusive, we spoke to Kari Skogland, the director of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, about her inspirations for the series.
Umapagan Ampikaipakan: We know that Marvel projects tend to dabble in different genres, and I wanted to know what your approach was when shooting this series. Was there a particular visual style that you went for? And were there any MCU movies, or other movies, that you took inspiration from?
Kari Skogland: I looked at all the MCU movies, of course, because the characters are born there and we experience them through that. So I wanted that to be the foundation. I also like to mix up my inspiration from all kinds of sources. Naturally, the go to ones would have been 48 Hours, and the Lethal Weapons, and Midnight Run. They’re sort of the classics. But then I went into The Intouchables – you know, the French film – which I thought that was a very heartfelt and interesting one to look at. Also Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, David Lean’s movies. I went really broad, because out of all of those inspired films, you try to put some synapse stuff in there and hopefully stir the pot and come out with something that’s original.
Besides the series having a signature look, I also wanted each character to have a kind of signature look, because we’re a very grounded world, we get to be grittier than the typical Marvel, very otherworldly, shows.
UA: And what about the look of the show?
KS: We’re a location show. So we are where you see us. I wanted to capture that in the camerawork as best I could. So that meant allowing the camera to be very experiential, to put the focal plane where I wanted it, and to be so that the audience is with a character in their perspective as compared to just a witness. I wanted it to feel like we were on the ride with them.
UA: I wanted to talk about how you frame both of these characters. When the show starts, you frame Falcon and Bucky in different ways. With Falcon it’s always wide. You show us the bigger picture. While with Bucky, everything is very close up and intimate.
KS: Absolutely. Absolutely. I wanted to capture that Bucky is in a prison of his own making. So I wanted us to feel claustrophobic, to feel, and to be inside, his head, and to really get a sense of the minutia of his thoughts. You know, like we’re really reading his eyeball when we are looking at his face. You’ll also notice that I did a lot of short focus shots. I wanted to draw the audience’s perspective into a place.
Now Sam’s world was different though. It was big and expansive. It’s Louisiana. It’s a family. And the camera’s always moving. Bucky’s camera, it was much more static, and much more specific in how it was covering the scene. Sam’s was searching and we were discovering his world.
So it was very much a conscious choice in order to set the characters up. Once they start getting together, however, it becomes a different thing as well. But yes, thank you for noticing.
Follow Us