Okay, so I haven't blogged in a while, between stress, depression, and sheer lethargic tendencies it's fair to say that you've missed a lot, as in you've missed a LOT!
it's also fair to say that by not blogging in so long...so have I, it's been a long time since the Professional toolkit unit I'm meant to be blogging about right now so it's not entirely unreasonable to admit that any personal material on certain things have been lost to me, be them documents, screenshots, or the main film itself for which I served as cinematographer for, I've honestly done a large disservice to all involved in failing to document what I have done with proper evidence, and I'm not going to solve this situation by lying. It'd be easy enough to pretend to make one of Shahid's storyboards and write notes on it to look like it was an actual copy but it wouldn't sit right with me making a mark based on forgery, so the following musings are my honest attempt to remember helping make a short film as part of a larger group. That said, others within the group such as Thomas Doukinitsas and Shahid Abu will have far more of the actual as it happened stuff on theirs so if you want real info with pictures i suppose they'll have to suffice.
So, as a Director of photography it was my job to oversee the aesthetic design of every level of production. The Pre-production began with a series of ideas that, in all honesty were consistently spiraling into a sense of mundanity; we knew the theme of consumerism and yet to show it in a unique or interesting metaphorical way was often escaping our grasp, that said when the idea for a museum/gallery of phones came into play at least visually it seemed appealing for me. The clinical nature of a gallery with the abstractness of infinite space through a very simple 3d post-process trick involving using the main set lines as a reference for digitally printing a looped version into perceived infinite space was instantly visually striking. However it was important not to let it overstay it's welcome and instead through storyboarding myself and Shahid began to complement a visual style involving an obsessive close-up to objects idea. The idea being to fetishise the objects as part of the environment to better represent the character's disposition; while several of those shots still appear in the final film it was far less than originally intended stylistically as, due to various situations I was unable to edit the piece as intended. However with a clinical nature inspired by films like "ghost in the shell", "Black Mirror: 15 million Merits", and "Tron: Legacy".
So during the shoot was pretty standard, making use of our equipment with tracking and panning shots etc. and a tonne of light tuning but it was ultimately about sticking and modifying the style to fit what could actually be filmed, that said an attention to lighting during set-building stream-lined this process immensely allowing more focus into getting all the shots we needed...that is until due to some static build-up or something I got rather heavily electric-shocked and, for the last part of it was left rather unresponsive, I can testify that any shock that makes it through protective gloves and rubber has a habit of being a really bad one and, as anyone there will testify, kind of left me out of it. We do have footage somewhere though where you can actually hear the shock, so that's fun :)
Okay so regarding the final film in post...I got nothing, depression set in and in all honesty I walked out of my duties and passed them to others. Some initial versions had me editing in post but anything resembling anything close to a finished copy had me out of involvement simply as I couldn't handle anymore at the time.
Moral of the story: avoid electrical shocks, don't get depression, if you do see people asap, and KEEP BACKUPS OF YOUR FILES SO YOU DON'T LOSE THEM SOMEWHERE!
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