BY TINGTING WANG
Jih-E Peng is a Taiwanese cinematographer who was raised in Hong Kong. Now based in New York, she has 15 years of experience working in the American film industry. With roots in photography, Peng’s career has allowed her to explore a variety of creative forms, from documentaries and narrative films to music videos.
Peng’s latest cinematography project is Girls Will Be Girls, a film written, produced, and directed by her longtime collaborator and first-time feature filmmaker Shuchi Talati. Peng had previously worked with Talati on her short film A Period Piece.
Opening on Sep. 13 at New York’s Film Forum, Girls Will Be Girls is a coming-of-age story about 16-year-old Mira, who attends a strict boarding school where dating is forbidden. Under society’s constraints, Mira is pushed to navigate her sexuality, desire, and agency.
In an interview edited and condensed for clarity, Peng speaks to NüStories contributor Tingting Wang about cinematography and her creative process.
Your career spans so many different types of works—what do you look for in projects?
Shuchi (Talati) and I have been friends for a long time, so I got to read almost every draft of the script that has ever existed, but I wasn’t actually officially attached to the film until relatively closer to production. It was deeply fulfilling to work with her on her short, A Period Piece–we are strong collaborators. We share the same priority whenever we’re working on films together: story is always the most important thing. It feels obvious but is surprisingly hard to come across. There are many films where the priority becomes about something other than the story–where the visuals supersede the narrative, for example–and then you lose the central thread of the protagonist and their journey.
I think for many filmmakers a lot of jobs end up coming down to keeping the lights on at home, but in recent times I’ve been actively much more careful and mindful about taking on the projects that align for me. That’s often multi-faceted; it means that the script or story is one that I connect with, that the director and I are good matches creatively, and that the production is mindful of labor rights and politics. It’s ideological and not always possible, but I think it’s important to merge these things as much as one can, especially as an artist.
Can you tell me more about your collaborative process with writer/director Shuchi Talati and how that translated into the film?
We always start with the script as the blueprint. We walk through the script and we break down everything: the overall arc of the film, the intentions of each of the scenes, the intentions of each of the characters, and thematic considerations. Then we start to craft the visual language. And for me, crafting a visual language starts with trying to get into the mind of the director. As a cinematographer, your understanding of the character and film has to align with the director’s understanding, so creating that mind-meld is key before making any visual choices.
One way I like to find understanding is through sharing art as references. I typically don’t like to just reference other films–it can be an extremely effective way of creating a common language, but there is always the worry of becoming too referential, and oftentimes will obscure the central thread of emotion. Shuchi and I would go to art museums and browse. I’d work on gauging everything that would speak to her–it wouldn’t matter if it was esoteric. So we’d see a sculpture, for example, and Shuchi would say: there’s something about the softness of the form. That incites a conversation: what is it about the softness that she likes? How does it connect with the character or what she’s trying to say about the story? From there, I work as a translator of sorts to take the essence of her feelings into a filmic format.
One clear example of this was the choice of the film’s 4:3 aspect ratio, which partially came from looking at a lot of Chinese-style landscape painting and the verticality of those depictions. We spoke about how vertical space allows for compression in the composition and a sense of externality. In the film, 16-year-old Mira exists within an extremely structured space in a patriarchal society. We felt we could utilize the closer to square format in a way that both stays in an intimate world with her while highlighting her external constraints.
Despite the rigorous process of uncovering our visual tropes and language in prep, on set days we both loosen up a little to allow for the magic that exists in the collaborative process with the actors. The early choices tend to find their ways of embedding.
Something that really stood out to me about the film was the softness of the colors and the light. Tell me more about the decisions and process that went into that.
We looked through a lot of artwork we really liked and spoke at length about color. One of my favorite places in the city is the New York Public Library Picture Collection. It’s an entire room full of alphabetically-arranged folders of the most random things, like lemons, or pools, or walnuts. When you open up a folder, you’ll find a stash of various images of the subject pulled from magazines, books, advertisements, etc. It’s an analog Google image search, if you will.
When Shuchi and I visited, we pulled a ton of different folders to see if there were images we could reference. One of the folders we pulled was the India folder, which was filled with a very particular Eurocentric depiction of India, with images mostly taken by European or American photographers and journalists. There is a certain color palette that’s associated with India here—a lot of highly saturated reds, teal, bright saffron yellows and oranges. It’s not as though these colors don’t exist in the country, but there are particular tropes that are very much a part of the recurrent Western imagination, in the same way that you would rarely see a depiction of Hong Kong from a Western gaze that isn’t centrally defined by old Hong Kong neon, when those of us who have lived there know that there’s a far greater diversity of what Hong Kong looks and feels like.
Shuchi wanted to ensure the gaze remained her own and Mira’s, and that the palette directly supported the emotion of the story. We ended up deciding on a warmer, more muted palette, something that really cradled the characters while being true to the period and setting. We spent a lot of time deliberating on the color of the school uniforms, the walls, the furniture, everything. We spoke a lot about the contrast of color between Mira’s home life and her school life and what tonally felt emotionally appropriate for each scene.
What is your process for breaking down the work of lighting a major project like this feature film?
You have to really get very clear on what your approach is for every scene; it is, frankly, an overwhelming process. I have a Google document from the film that is just lighting notes that I think is something like 30 pages. There’s so much that goes into deciding the details, whether it’s hard light or soft light, warm light or cool light, depending on the emotional content of what we’re doing. In every single one of those scenes, there was a note about how this fits into the larger structure of the visual film. So for example, is this supposed to be a really devastating point in the film? Is this supposed to really hurt? What is the thing as an audience that we’re supposed to feel? We try to direct the light to play with the emotionality of the scene while maintaining an overall cohesion in look and feeling.
One of the other things that I really like to do in my work is to try to create a sense of hyper-specificity of time. In that spreadsheet I would write the specific time of each scene from the script. Did this happen in the afternoon? Does this happen in the morning? And what does this morning light look like? What does nighttime look like? Those answers, plus entries for color temperature, diffusion filters, sometimes exact lighting units, and more make it onto the page.
Once I have the creative overview sorted, my job becomes collaborative in a different direction. I break down my approach and references to my gaffer (the incredible Sajid Shaikh), and together we work on my preferences for lighting units and work on setups together. This part of the process is crucial, as it determines more than just how the lighting will end up looking. Strategy around how to light a scene helps with the flow on set and the management of manpower and resources. This part of the preparation is a big part of setting yourself up for success or failure on a shoot day. I got really lucky on this job with a stellar lighting team, who all executed beautiful work with minimal resources.
I love that the film dodges so many stereotypical tropes that typically feature in stories about heterosexual romances, especially regarding who takes initiative. We see the protagonist, Mira, learn about sex and experiment with what it means to claim sexual agency in such a frank and candid way. Can you share more about how you and Shuchi Talati grappled with the depiction of Mira’s story?
When you’re making films, I think it’s a mistake to overly focus on didacticism–you can often lose character in its pursuit. One thing that I think is so remarkable about Shuchi as a writer and director is that while these themes exist (and are certainly mindfully woven into the story), they are not the central driving force of the film. First and foremost, always, it is about the character and the relationships between characters. And I think when you’re trying to say something–in this case about sexual agency, patriarchy, and societal constraints–a lot of how you achieve that just comes from being truthful to the protagonist’s experience in their surrounding world; that in itself gives them agency. It’s really just about letting Mira live. That’s feminist! Just let her live!
Shuchi is always uninterested in being coy about sex in film. We wanted to be frank and straightforward about showing Mira explore this side of herself. It’s not overly romanticized; it’s not shying away from showing it. Here’s a woman who’s curious about her body, curious about sex, curious about desire, and here are the things she’s doing to address that curiosity. Shuchi never writes sex from a place of romanticism or shame–sex and desire are simply a part of life. So we aim to shoot in the same way she writes.
Let’s talk about the sex scenes. Sex scenes are featured in both Girls Will Be Girls and A Period Piece. What is it about sex that reveals certain dynamics?
Sex in films is often used as a blunt force instrument of a singular emotional beat within a larger arc of the story. Sex in Shuchi’s films are never about just sex–they are conversations, and are oftentimes conversations that the characters are having with themselves. They have an entire arc of their own, with many different beats and different parts to it. And because it’s such an intimate and vulnerable act, you get to see a truthfulness about how people feel about one another and what their power dynamics are.
What is your process for preparing to film sex scenes?
The process involved Shuchi spending an extensive amount of time prepping the actors and creating an atmosphere of trust and safety. She spoke at length to them about the scenes and what was going to happen in them, working with them on what they felt comfortable and uncomfortable doing. I’ve shot many sex scenes as a cinematographer, and as long as the actors are comfortable with me being there, I usually insist on going to rehearsals so that we can really think about staging and how to shoot in a way that respects the actors’ boundaries. Shuchi and I map out a shot list based on our conversations of the visual language of the scene after we understand the blocking that feels right for the scene and the actors.
I take filming intimacy extremely seriously. Especially for young actors, it can be a really violating and traumatic experience in the wrong hands–it’s such an intimate and vulnerable thing to do. It’s extremely important for me to make sure that the actors know that you’re watching out for them and that they have agency in the process. For this project, we would take photos of what each setup would look like before it was shot, and get the actors’ approval before we went through with it. We did everything we could to make sure that at every point in the process, they felt like they had agency to say no, and that the “no” was heard.
On the shoot days, it was always a closed set, and all the (extremely minimal) team members on the closed set were women and people the actors felt comfortable having around. Often this resulted in some funny configurations where we all did more than one job on those days!
I really do have to applaud actors Preeti Panigrahi (who plays Mira) and Kesav Binoy Kiron (Sri) for the way they both approached their scenes–I observed them regularly checking in on each other at every point of the process. They were both exceedingly mindful that they had full consent from one another for anything, down to the smallest touch on the arm. This extended beyond just the intimate scenes–it was really beautiful to watch them build safety and trust in their working relationship.
Do you have any advice for aspiring cinematographers from minority communities who might want to follow in your footsteps?
Telling stories—oral histories, written histories, filmic histories, visual histories—are some of the only ways we get to show that there’s any alternate perspective in the world. We wouldn’t know about so many forgotten histories if not for the people that have fiercely held on to them before us. These stories and experiences of how people live their lives and the context in which they do are a crucial part of a global lexicon.
So if you’re interested in becoming a filmmaker or storyteller of any kind, try to marinate on the specificity of what exists inside you. Examine your history. Observe the world around you. Stretch your understanding. Work on honing that more than anything. The technical stuff is very easy to learn in comparison. The part where we learn what we want to say about what it means to be human in this world is much harder.
About the author
Tingting Wang is a writer and contributor based in Brooklyn, New York.
Photo credit: Kent Bassett