When cinematographer Polly Morgan and director Olivia Newman were brought in to adapt Delia Owens’ best-selling novel, Where the Crowdads Sing, the story spoke to them naturally.
The Sony Pictures movie of the same name, which hits theaters July 15, tells the story of Kia (Daisy Edgar Jones), a young woman who raises herself in the swamps of North Carolina in the 1950s. Her journey — and her relationship with nature in particular — resonated with Morgan (“A Quiet Place Part II,” “6 Balloons”). Her own experience growing up in West Sussex in the UK, “in an unknown location with the nearest house miles away”, sounded familiar.
When a man Kaya was once involved with is murdered, the woman known to the Barclay Cove community as Marsh Girl, the prime suspect, comes along.
Newman and Morgan relied on Owens’ words: “A Marsh is not a swamp. A swamp is an expanse of light where grass grows in water and water flows into the sky.”
With this line serving as inspiration, Morgan explains her idea behind the opening sequence: “We wanted to take people out of this open world of the swamp, and its light and reflective water to show the beauty that is out there.” With the escape of the heron, we follow the saga of Kya, which transports the viewer “deep in the swamp.”
DP also used a streamlined sequence intertwining two young boys on bikes to show swamp life. “We wanted from the beginning to take the scenes — take them, put them in the swamp and never let them go,” she says.
When discussing how the camera set the scene, Morgan and Newman decided that a drone would be the perfect tool for this fluidity. But capturing the heron movement has proven challenging. “It wasn’t just about showing the swamps. It was about taking off with the bird and showing off its flight,” Newman says.
Louisiana Bay was atmospheric in North Carolina, where Houma city doubled for the fictional Barclay Cove. “Weather goes hand in hand with nature, so when we first find it .” says Morgan [Kya]She’s looking at the sun with a feather [blown by a light breeze. We wanted to let the viewer be lost in Kya’s experience of the world, and so we used the natural world as references for different emotional beats.”
Morgan warmly lights a hopeful moment on the beach as Kya waits for Tate (Taylor John Smith) to arrive. But when night turns to morning and Kya has been stood up, she sits on the water’s edge, her hopes dashed as an unsteady sky registers in the ripples of marsh water. “I wanted to show the coolness of the morning light and played with light and color to subtly support the performance and the emotion of what’s happening,” says the DP.
Morgan used another element to help tell Kya’s journey: Before she’s abandoned by her family, little Kya (Jojo Regina) shares an intimate moment with her mother and sisters around a welcoming fireplace. A short time later, fire takes on a different meaning as Kya watches her father burn her mother’s belongings amid raging flames in a steel drum.
Says Morgan: “It was all about thinking of ways the natural world could help highlight Kya’s journey.”
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