THE FLAT (Short film)
For this light-hearted indie film, I wanted to have a soft, accessible feel for the visuals. This lead to a number of interesting decisions for the equipment we needed to have on set.
Close-up, Inspecting dirt on her finger
Despite the soft look of the lighting, this was actually shot on a bright sunny day. The light modifiers I chose prevented the typical harsh shadows of direct sunlight and instead kept it nice and smooth. Also, I used a wider aperture on my lens to keep her hand blurred in the foreground - which subtly keeps her face as the priority of the shot.
Close-up, Handing over a can
Using a 35mm lens with a wide aperture let me pull the attention away from her striped shirt and the distracting texture of the grass and redirect it towards the can. The shallow depth of field kept the can in focus, while leaving their arms as leading lines to visually "point" the eye towards it.
Mid shot, in car
The diagonal lines of the window subtly directs the viewer's eye towards his face. We set up a flag on the car's roof to block reflections on the windshield which kept the character as the brightest element and reinforced him as the primary focus of the shot. Also, keeping the side mirror in-frame provides context of where he is.
Wide Establishing shot, mildred heading outside
In this scene, Mildred decides to take action after realizing something was not quite right, so I wanted the camera to follow her movement to add a certain kind of a visual momentum as she heads outside her home.