Latest digital short collaboration with friends and colleagues Josh Lawson and Curtis Leonard.
Plan... to finally produce a script I had been working on and collaborate for Josh's final major project at Bournemouth University. So the project got a deadline, crew and kit straight away. Although the project had been solely my creation for a while I was glad to hand the role of Director over to Josh to enable me to realise the script specifically cinematically as DP. By the time the script was workshopped our excellent producer, Ellie D'Silva, had us holding castings.
The shoot itself featured a new and at times gorilla workflow, of rickety 1970's Honda generator, mac, firewire and camera. Our chosen camera was the Panasonic HVX200, able to shoot uncompressed HD to P2 cards.The only problem was that we couldn't afford to
rent the extortionate P2 cards, so either we used a different camera and shot HDV to tape and encountered the old compression issues, or captures live over firewire. This meant that for the first time as a camera man I had the power to turn-over taken away. With the Director (Lawson) hitting 'Capture Now' when he was happy with the shot on his monitor. I would find myself setting up a static shot, shouting 'camera set', and then wandering off to look at a larger monitor whilst that angle was shot. This freedom from the camera gave me much more time to look at a scene from different perspectives as the actors were going for a take and in doing so, see new angles and spot where the light was fell on the actors throughout a movement.
We were glad to be shooting in February as the cold, diffused winter light was exactly the right feel for the exterior dystopian scenes, so as to contrast with the warm oranges and browns of the interior scenes lit only by candle light. The exterior pallet would be contrasted also by the Girl's long red coat, and too a reflection of the fairy tale influences on the film.
The shoot went very smoothly, much to the credit of Josh's Mother and Sisters cooking. Having a hot meal at the end of the day with cast and crew all together is necessary for any no-budget shoot.
Plan... to finally produce a script I had been working on and collaborate for Josh's final major project at Bournemouth University. So the project got a deadline, crew and kit straight away. Although the project had been solely my creation for a while I was glad to hand the role of Director over to Josh to enable me to realise the script specifically cinematically as DP. By the time the script was workshopped our excellent producer, Ellie D'Silva, had us holding castings.
The shoot itself featured a new and at times gorilla workflow, of rickety 1970's Honda generator, mac, firewire and camera. Our chosen camera was the Panasonic HVX200, able to shoot uncompressed HD to P2 cards.The only problem was that we couldn't afford to
rent the extortionate P2 cards, so either we used a different camera and shot HDV to tape and encountered the old compression issues, or captures live over firewire. This meant that for the first time as a camera man I had the power to turn-over taken away. With the Director (Lawson) hitting 'Capture Now' when he was happy with the shot on his monitor. I would find myself setting up a static shot, shouting 'camera set', and then wandering off to look at a larger monitor whilst that angle was shot. This freedom from the camera gave me much more time to look at a scene from different perspectives as the actors were going for a take and in doing so, see new angles and spot where the light was fell on the actors throughout a movement.We were glad to be shooting in February as the cold, diffused winter light was exactly the right feel for the exterior dystopian scenes, so as to contrast with the warm oranges and browns of the interior scenes lit only by candle light. The exterior pallet would be contrasted also by the Girl's long red coat, and too a reflection of the fairy tale influences on the film.
The shoot went very smoothly, much to the credit of Josh's Mother and Sisters cooking. Having a hot meal at the end of the day with cast and crew all together is necessary for any no-budget shoot.
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