The Twentieth Hour

[Matthew Patton]

Hi guys, I've been floating about this forum now for about four or five months just reading away at everything you've all got to say and it's fantastic. Anyhow, it's about time I put myself in the lion's mouth so to speak.

 

Here are a couple of screen grabs from some conceptual footage I shot last Sunday morning.

 

 

 

 

 

They are just cut downs from a 1080i shoot.

 

The shoot itself was done using nothing but natural lighting sources, as that is the way I want to shoot the majority of the film and it was shot at a slightly higher speed than normal to give it less of a video texture and make it look the slightest touch grainy, although you might not be able to see it in such a low resolution format. As well as that I've opted for a foray into lightly contrasting the image to make it appear the slightest touch stark and washed, without actually washing it out.

 

Being the glutton for punishment that I am; I'm the writer, director and although I will have a lighting director/director of photography on hand for the production itself, the cinematography will be overseen by myself also. Not through arrogance can I just add, because the workload is harsh, but because I have a very strict concept of what needs to come out the other end of the camera.

 

Currently the project's budget is in the region of £45,000 but if more funding becomes available I'd obviously like to see what else higher up the scale, could be used to shoot the film other than the current Canon XL-H1s we are using.

 

Any questions or feedback on the stills is appreciated, and I'll try and post more material/keep you all updated on how the production is moving along in future.

[Hemant Tavathia]

I'll keep reading as you post more. Please give as detailed info as possible especially about lighting and cinematography so I can learn.

thanks.

[Scot McPhie]

Matthew can you give us a bit of information on the style of the film, because IMO video with out lighting will look pretty poor - although film without lighting will come off well -- however it may well suit the style of the film - if it's contemporary in the moment hand held video doco style.

[Matthew Patton]

Matthew can you give us a bit of information on the style of the film, because IMO video with out lighting will look pretty poor - although film without lighting will come off well -- however it may well suit the style of the film - if it's contemporary in the moment hand held video doco style.

 

Hi Scott, apologies for the delay on the reply, I'm only back from Cannes there. I never even thought to ask if anyone on here was attending. Would've been good to meet up.

 

The style of the film is supposed to reflect the nature of the older brother's interpretation of autism (the character being a sufferer of ASD). Therefore I want it to be a sensory exploration of vision in that it's not stylised but selectively 'over natural' looking. The mission statement (as it were) of the cinematography would be to constantly reflect the character's mood, therefore giving the audience the chance to see things more as the character would see them, and to not feel like they are watching a film but watching a person's point of view. A simplification of this, as an example, is that at times during the film the picture will under or over saturate depending on the character's concentration. There are many other little details which I'd love to share in that regard, but don't want to give away just yet.

 

How this will turn out is objective, it may be terrible or it may work as planned. It will be interesting to see the outcome.

 

As for the lighting, can I backtrack on a statement I made. I meant to say that the above shots were taken with nothing but natural source lighting, but as for the film I want it to look very natural and not stylised. There will of course be lighting used to properly highlight the visuals, I didn't mean to say that the film would be shot using only natural sources.

 

I appreciate the interest, if you have any more questions I'd only be too happy to try to answer them.