Vincent

On the 11th of April I went down to London to do a days gripping and camera trainee work on a super 16mm short called Vincent. 


It was a really quirky funny script about a homeless person who thinks he's a professional time traveler. It was shot half in a sort of documentary style and the other half like a film which I thought was a nice touch, it really drew me closer to the character and gave it a more real and personal feel.


The director of photography was Brain Strange, who I had not worked with before, but after checking out his website http://www.brianstrangedop.com/ I was really looking forward to working with him. Looking at his show reel I saw that he has worked on some really big budget, highly stylised productions and I was looking forward to being a part of some of his work. He was really nice guy and great to work with. Unfortunately all our shots were outside so we didn't get to do to much on the lighting front, just boosting the available light using to HMI's and some silks and polly boards, but hopefully I will work with him again in the future and get to do some crazy lighting set ups.


I also have to mention Arvind Abraham, the producer. He was brilliant, he kept us very well fed and watered and managed to find time to shoot a making of documentary on his iphone that was streamed live to youtube while chasing up the rental company for not supplying film cores with our camera. This incident with the film cores put us two hours behind schedule before the first shot. Which was very unfortunate as the 1st AD Paula had gone to so much trouble to meet every one off the tube very early to get us all to set on time.


All in all I had a wonderful day on set, the weather was perfect, the script was great and the crew were all very nice. 

Ailema

At the beginning of last month I did three days sparking work on the short "Ailema" which was written and directed by Cecilia Frugiuele. I was brought on to the shoot by Dan Stafford Clark who was the DP. I have worked with Dan quite a lot over the course of my career, I get on very well with him and I like his use of artificial and natural light, it has a great very stylised look. 


I wasn't on for the entirety of the production and as a result of this I couldn't really make sense of the story. But our child actor was fantastic, not only was she an incredible actress (one take wonder) but she was also incredibly easy to work with. I have worked with some child actors who can make life very difficult on set but thankfully not in this case.


The production company was Parkville Pictures who I haven't worked with before but I was very impressed and would love to work for them again. They were organised and friendly and had the most incredible set food available all day! Whole meal bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese as snacks all day!! Happy days!


The short was shot on RED camera at 2k resolution, and should hopefully be released next month.