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Tim, Sean, Mira & Mars

The shoot.

It was six days of shooting, from the 4th-9th of March. We were shooting at the Edinburgh Filmhouse from the 4th-8th and at Bonnie & Tom’s flat on the 9th. The shoot was a fun but very stressful experience. Getting the filmhouse as a location was very good for our film but for our crew, it taught us a lot about what it might be like to shoot a film in the North Pole. It was ridiculously freezing in the building, which is understandable as it hasn’t been maintained or heated in the few years since it was forced to close its doors. If I could compare it to anything I’d say it was colder the Saint Catherines shoot which was mainly outdoors in February in Argyll. Enough about the cold, if I could talk about the dust for a second… Safe to say I wasn’t shocked when I ended up with a severe chest infection following the shoot. This aside, the crew was incredibly good at getting on with it and we wrapped up as warm as we could to keep ourselves comfortable while shooting.

I was so greatful to have the help of Alex, Findlay, Lewis and Zak (from the year below on our course) to be my ACs (Lewis was also the gaffer), to which I thank you all endlessly! The set ups on the first couple days were the most stressful because I had to make a lot of decisions on the spot about lighting. I was lucky to have had a few hours in the mornings of the first few days of shooting to test lighting setups with my ACs prior to the cast arriving, which saved me from being stuck with thrown together setups when shooting began.

The house lights in the cafe were such a headache to light around as it was between turning them off and having it be pitch black (not suggestive of an open, operating cafe) and having them on and sacrificing the visual style I was wanting to achieve. We left them on, had the Amaran as a daylight source, a dedo as a spotlight over the cafe table and a LEDgo as an eye light for the shot reverse shot CU’s of Mira, Tim and Sean. In retrospect I would have turned off the house lights, used a different part of the cafe for the scene and created more of a mood lighting look to the shots because I think it would have looked better and matched the kind of surreal quality of the other scenes and their respective lighting setups. This was all an important compromise though as Robbie was ultimately concerned about keeping the match cut between that scene and the next. The scenes in the auditorium were initially a bit difficult to figure out how to light. We were informed of the issue that the house lights had stopped working in the auditorium a few days before the shoot which stumped us, but we figured it out. I decided to use the Amaran on full brightness bounced against the ceiling to light the room. The room was completely dark without it. We used the Kino Flo Celeb in the same way as the test shoot, to act as the cinema screen, directed at the characters faces, on the television setting. This was effective but I think perhaps a solid colour light though less realistic might have been more appropriate because the colour information on camera gets kind of mixed up when you use the television/strobe setting on the celeb. I think I was hoping for more of the visual inspiration to come through here (Taxi Driver esque). But saying all of that, I am still pleased with how the shots of the characters in the auditorium turned out. I think what stands out is the movement, blocking and angles I used.

Lighting the box office was another hurdle to overcome. It is a very dark room already and the light from the windows is largely blocked off by scaffolding. I had to bring in the Amaran again to light the space and it helped a lot. We managed to use practicals in this scene that had been lying around the filmhouse, and came in handy to add some ambience to the shots. The black wooden desk, walls and signs and bright red ceiling that were already there were quite visually off putting to me and it was hard to light around them as they were quite reflective and very contrasty. I think we did the best we could with the space, and I decided to light it quite moody to keep the room dark and hide any visual distractions.

Shooting in the projection room was very constrictive as we couldn’t fit everyone inside during filming. It was also quite precarious to light because of the size of the room and the obstacles in the room, the huge clunky projectors and wires and desks, and the windows to the auditorium. These were really cool and useful in terms of set design but not so cool in terms of where to put the lights, the sound people, the camera, the tripod and the tracks. When it came to shooting scene 6, the at this point infamous (to me) Dolly shot that moved back and forth and whip panned and moved back and panned left (so much moving) it was a test of faith for everyone in the crew. But we managed it. It wasn’t perfect in the end but we got the shot and we didn’t have any time to faff bout as the Arri remote follow focus had to go back mid shoot. It was moments like that when I was so greatful for our ADs Monica and Ben who kept everyone together and kept spirits up when disaster seemed to loom upon us.

The most unexpected shoot day was the last day at Tom and Bonnie’s flat. It was the whip pans that got me! I don’t want to recall how many takes we did of me trying to get the one take of whip pans between Tim, Sean and Mira as they sat in a circle. I think I just blacked out at some point and woke up when we finally got one that kind of worked. It was one of those things that sounds simple in your head but keeping to my marks and panning at the right time felt like a test of my willpower, intelligence and physical reflexes. When it came to the next big shot, a Dolly shot that moves from side profile MCU to front on CU I was kind of relaxed because I knew the hardest shot was over. This was really fun to do though because it takes a lot of coordination. Luckily I had Findlay and Alex who were there to help me pull of these shots. It felt like a 5 person camera operation at times (with Ben and Robbie standing at the monitor being our eyes, telling us if the movements we were trying to pull of looked okay on camera). I think we got there in the end though.

Reflecting on the shoot, I often felt I was in way over my head at times. I can be quite isolated with my creative process when I make films, which doesn’t often lend itself to shooting with a crew. I have come to value communication as the pinnacle of any healthy film production. Without communicating, things fall apart very easily, and it makes it hard to know what’s going on. I realised I like to ask questions a lot, even if I want to seem like I should know what I’m doing at all times, I don’t, I’m still forming my understanding of this role as a craft and a skill. Cinematography to me is a means to creating a world or an atmosphere that helps tell a story. I love visual storytelling so much because it transports you to somewhere other than you are right now. This shoot has taught me a lot about equipment, how to use it and the limitless capacity for human error when I come into contact with it. I am proud of the way we all pushed ourselves during this shoot, and all kept a sense of optimism and solidarity with each other to the very end of filming.

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Tim, Sean, Mira & Mars

Pre-production - sketchy stuff…. bad sketches.. my storyboards and lighting plans

I didn’t have much time or focus during this process to draw out the beautifully drawn storyboards of my dreams (I never have) which is always a kind of ‘I’ll do that next time’ thing that time consumes and means it never happens. I wanted to get some things drawn that were important though, namely the shots I couldn’t quite envision without a visual reference. That was the shots in the box office and the cafe bar. The ones with the most questionable decor/colour schemes and available house lighting. I discussed these with Robbie and there were some alterations to the angles, blocking and setups so that it would look how we both wanted it to. The lighting plans were based on my knowledge of lighting (which could be better at times) and also a shot in the dark when it came to the locations we were filming in. We stuck to them for the most part but there was of course some alterations and luckily I would have an excellent gaffer from the year below (Lewis) who was able to assist me with setting up lights during the shoot.

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Tim, Sean, Mira & Mars

Pre-production - Planning

Following the process of finding inspiration through research and moodboards came the physical planning. When it came to creating the shotlist, I had several meetings about what shots would be included with Robbie, who had a very clear vision of how every scene would visually transition, as there is a large focus on the tone and rhythm in the writing. The script plays like a dance almost, and so a lot of the shots became very focused on movement; whip pans, Dolly shots moving in/out/sideways, etc. I found it useful to loosely annotate the script with the ideas we had for the shots. When I first finished the shot list, myself Robbie and Rosie sat down and discussed the shots, condensing any that could be condensed and figuring out what would be realistically achievable in our time scale for shooting on location. The filmhouse allowed us to shoot from Monday to Friday 9am-5pm, which was incredibly generous and trusting, but meant there would have to be a culling when it came to the initially giant and very ambitious Shotlist (I think it was nearing 100 shots). Robbie and Rosie cut down the shot list and we were left with a far more doable and less daunting shooting schedule (created by Rosie, who took on so much more than just sound for this film- thank you!!).

During the planning there was a lot of discussion over the feasibility of certain shots/setups. There were glaring issues with time restrictions, equipment limitations, physical space (thinking of the tiny projection room) and crew numbers. The equipment booking process was not completely smooth sailing, as to be expected, so there had to be a lot of compromise with which equipment we would use and also how long we had some items for. I decided to shoot on the Black magic URSA for this film as I hadn’t been trained on the Alexa the prior semester (something I so wish I had done). I was confident with this decision because I had used the URSA on Dormouse and felt comfortable in my ability to operate the camera as well as create the cinematography I wanted to using the URSA and it’s prime lens kit.

The lighting was a precarious and difficult thing to figure out because we were shooting on location at the filmhouse. This meant we couldn’t just come in with our lights to test the location for the optimal lighting set ups. This was frustrating as it was difficult for me to imagine how the lights would fare in the environment of the filmhouse: its auditorium, booking office, cafe and the projection rooms. After working on Orla & Katie’s film Saint Catherine’s doing production design, I learned about the magic that is the Amaran❤️ a really powerful LED light that would save us entirely when we discovered the lights in the main auditorium were broken and couldn’t be used. The amaran was bright enough to light the entire room, both saving us setting up equipment in the dark and also giving the perfect bounce on the ceiling to light the space for the shots we had planned. I’ll discuss lighting more in my post about the actual shoot, but it was a big challenge for me to say the least.

Unfortunately, aside from the test shoot, I wasn’t able to do any camera tests due to a lot of logistical, scheduling and planning blunders on my end, as well as some personal stuff I had going on. This is something I feel regret over as I know it would have made it far easier to go into the shoot knowing exactly what I was doing, especially with movement. We luckily managed to do some recces at the filmhouse prior to shooting though, which was useful in envisioning the shots. I took about a hundred pictures of the rooms we were going to film in, and discussed with Robbie how to best use the space for the shots we wanted and also to make the most of what was a pretty much fully dressed set already. We also had to measure the projection room space to figure out if it was possible to do the long take Dolly shot Robbie wanted for scene 6. The initial conclusion was that it would be too tight a space to fit the tracks and that we’d have to compromise and use the tango rolling slider. This actually proved to be wrong when it came to the shoot, and incidentally we couldn’t book the slider so had to try the Dolly tracks anyway. The biggest concern for me during the recce was once again the lighting, especially in the cafe bar which had awful house lights and visually obstructive beams and decor that didn’t at all converge with the aesthetic and visual story in mind for TSMM. Retrospectively I would have suggested creating an entirely different lighting setup or more dressed set for the cafe scene as I was not happy with how the shots were filmed in that space turned out. I think if had I had the capacity at the time, I would have taken some initiative to solve the problems I had with these kinds of details. Another unfortunate matter is that we didn’t have a production designer for the film, and it was apparent in some scenes. The crew helped out loads with set design particularly Robbie and Rosie, who took on several more roles than they signed up for as there was several issues with lack of availability of crew and roles that hadn’t been filled. I am so impressed at their willingness and dedication to creating this film, I know it wouldn’t have been possible if they weren’t so involved in the entire process.

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Tim, Sean Mira & Mars

Pre-production - Setting the mood

The pre production process for TSMM was kind of a whirlwind and went so fast that it’s almost hard to detail. The beginning of pre production involved meeting with Robbie (director/writer) to get an idea of what he wanted the film to be like. I was interested in doing the cinematography for this film in the first place because of our previous experience working together on Dormouse, a film he had also written. I think that creatively I am kind of all over the place with my process. I find it easiest to find visual inspiration by combing through stills and images from films and media that I find on Pinterest/blogs. This is what I first did to spark inspiration for TSMM. The Pinterest page evolved over the course of the pre production to include sections detailing separate visual elements of the film; the settings (auditorium, projection room, staff room, cafe) the characters, and the cinematography itself.

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Cinematography classes with David Byrne!

My notes from various cinematography classes this semester 📝

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Planning for the test shoot!

Notes on the location recce, lighting plans and storyboard! 📝

When planning the test shoot, me and Robbie discussed the shots that were both central to the film and involved elements of cinematography that we wanted to experiment with. After Robbie secured the location, Edinburgh Filmhouse, we managed to visit the building to do a location recce. During the recce we looked at the projection room and the auditorium and discussed which shots we would be able to feasibly achieve in each space. The projection room/office is quite small and cramped, with a lot of equipment, machinery, and office furniture. 

We discussed the logistics of the space; namely where we could physically fit the camera and tripod for the shots that we were interested in getting. We then practiced the blocking of the shots in different positions in the space, using the ARRI viewfinder app to experiment with the lens options. We discovered the idea Robbie had in the planning stages of a really low angle shot of Tim and Sean sitting on the floor wouldn’t be possible in the cramped space, and so we decided what worked better was a low angle shot from the bottom of the room looking up at the office window/doorway as the characters stood in the frames of each. Prior to the test shoot, Robbie was interested in experimenting with a split diopter shot of Tim and Sean in the projection room as they sat and talked. This was supposed to be in the same shot as the low angle of them on the floor. During the recce, we tried blocking the shot and as much as it looked good on my iphone camera as I crouched between two cinema-sized projectors, the shot would just not be feasible with the BlackMagic URSA, even on a super wide lens. The equipment would not fit in the space with an operator, nor would a tripod be low enough to the floor to shoot low angle. As a last minute plan change before the test shoot, Robbie decided to opt for doing a split-diopter shot in the auditorium, splitting the two shots of the narrator and Mira we were thinking about getting into one shot (technically 2 shots merged together since the effect would be created in the edit – we don’t have a special split diopter lens attachment sadly).

In the auditorium we were spoiled for space which was a nice contrast. The colours in the auditorium and projection room are starkly different so I was concerned as to how to light the spaces in a way that felt harmonious and pondered if I should instead lean into the contrasting atmospheres of each space. We practiced blocking the shots of the narrator and Mira as she watches the Stargate sequence from the beginning of the script.

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Pinterest updates! (Final Year Project)

Notes from November 3rd 2023 📝

Moving on up in the world - I made ~sections~ for my pinterest board! This just helps keep my ideas organised for the film. In my development process, I find collecting lots of specific visual references for different elements of the film allows me to consider the shots I might want to get for the film. Ahead of the test shoot I decided to focus on the vibes of each of the characters and locations.

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Meetings, meetings!

A recap of meetings with Robbie about our grad film! 📝

So many changes in so few months! I had several meetings over the course of Sept/Oct/Nov with Robbie to discuss the film 'Tim, Sean, Mira & Mars' (final name!). As the script developed, so did the ideas for the cinematography! During our meetings we discussed the logistical issues of filming in a market hall, which came to mean the idea changed over time to become what it is now. Robbie came to me prior to the day of the pitch with the idea of shooting in a cinema, and having the story surround the three characters as they all work together there the day of its impending closure. Scrapping the central idea of the film building up to the characters all sitting together and watching the ~launch to Mars~, this new script builds up to the closure of the cinema and their viewings of the Stargate sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey! But - this made way for a much more feasible and personally more compelling idea. Setting the film in an old cinema is perfect, because as we don't have a production designer on the project yet, the workload of dressing the set and the characters is halved when we have secured a location - which is not *too* difficult to do in Edinburgh.

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Cinematography moodboard for 'M-A-R-S' project!

Notes from October 3rd 2023 📝

So I was tasked with creating a moodboard for the (working title) 'M-A-R-S' project! It was fun to condense my huge pinterest board into a single-page moodboard that communicates my ideas for the cinematography. Here it is!

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Some September Pinteresting...

Notes from September 22nd 2023 📝

So I created a Pinterest board based on the ideas me and Robbie talked about for his film (M-A-R-S as a working title!!) I found a lot of really cool inspiration for the cinematography, including a LOT of stills from Gregg Araki films (a personal favourite director of mine). I really love the visual style of Araki's films and their whacky nostalgic production design. I found a lot of 90s films had visuals that struck me as relevant for my research. Nowhere, The Doom Generation, Chungking Express, Gummo, Paris Is Burning, The Watermelon Woman are just some of the films collected in this board!

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Meeting notes - Robbie's Film!

Notes from September 19th 2023 📝

Today I had a meeting with Robbie to discuss potentially doing the cinematography for his project (untitled as of yet!) The idea for this film surrounds a group of three friends, focusing on the themes of nostalgia, memories and time, as well as exploring the idea of nostalgia being sold as a commodity in our culture. I am starting to think about the sort of cinematography I want to do for the final year project and this idea seems like a good fit for the kind of visuals I want to create and experiment with.

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Notes on what I would like to do for the final year project...

Notes from September 2023 📝

Here lies... some things on my mind when I'm thinking about the grad film!

The specialism I want to focus on for the final year project is cinematography. I’m interested in creating visuals that explore the themes of nostalgia and memories - I want to capture the small moments and details in scenes, spaces and characters.

My visual inspirations for cinematography are The Florida Project (2017) and The Virgin Suicides (1999). I’m drawn to the cinematography in these films because of their dream-like nostalgic atmospheres, and their contemplative, picturesque camera work, mise-en-scene, and warm, soft lighting. Plus: the subject matter, coming of age, nostalgia, connections & time!

The Florida Project (2017) Dir. Sean Baker, Cinematography by Alexis Zabe

I love the use of colour in this film. I've watched a few of Sean Baker's films (Red Rocket, Starlet, The Florida Project, Tangerine) and there is a consistent visual style across them - super punchy and vibrant colours, characters and mise-en-scene. I really like the use of super wide lenses and 2.40:1 aspect ratio in The Florida Project, making the characters and spaces feel vast and endless.

The Virgin Suicides (1999) Dir. Sofia Coppola, Cinematography by Ed Lachman

This film is nostalgia all over! Sofia Coppola's directorial debut and my favourite film of hers, it has such a distinct and iconic visual style that is dreamy, soft, warm, and extremely pretty. I really love how Coppola juxtaposes the sweetness of the visuals with the extremely dark subject matter. From shot to shot, every image is symbolic and seeped in metaphor. I would love to experiment with cinematography in this same vein - capturing nostalgia and the idea of memories in kind of surreal and symbolic ways.

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Dormouse ~ Equipment list

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Dormouse ~ Shotlist

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My official Proposal of Intentions for Dormouse!

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Dormouse Planning Pages :)

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Rosie's flat - Shooting Day 3 (11 April 2023)