I am the DOP of a graduation film, I have been studying at UCA Farnham for 2 and a bit years now and in my final year I have had the opportunity to shoot the largest project I have ever shot!
Synopsis
On new years eve, Amy decides in a sudden moment to walk off the set of a local new years event she was co-hosting, and heading indiscriminately "up north". Blake, her younger brother who has settled into a house with his boyfriend Kevin, must drop everything in that moment to go find out where she's gone. Through his journey up north chasing after Amy, following her trail, the wave of angry calls from his boyfriend and his sense of connection to his sister, Blake comes to discover that perhaps he also needed to run away and ignore the superficial goals of what bring him happiness that he's settled into in recent years.
I want to shoot this project with S16mm lenses on digital, I have access to a fantastic set of Carl Zeiss Distagon super speeds, I think that the ARRI AMIRA will be the best camera body for the job, this will be rented from a rental house. I want to approach this shoot in a documentary style to create natural and evocative images that connect the viewer with the characters on screen as well as bring my own voice into the camera language as I will be operating. I have taken great inspiration from the mindsets that Terrence Malick and Emanuel Lubezki take when shooting together, this film will benefit greatly if we can tap into a similar train of thought.
One of my main worries is being able to bring in enough light as most of the scenes are in the dead of night. I am looking at effective and unobtrusive ways of bringing up ambience as well as lighting areas so that characters can move freely within the space. Safe to say that we will be using lots of bounce and small LEDs hidden in roofs to bring up important areas!
Thats Me!
Oliver Craig - Director of Photography
I’m grateful for the chance to work on a project with a wonderful crew and to have the confidence of our director. We have been working closely together to plan how we want to translate our visions for this film; it has been a great and enlightening experience. I want to bring honesty to Northbound through my work with the camera and lights, I want to be able to capture and translate the emotions that this story holds onto the screen. To achieve this I want to shoot in a way that will allow the actors to convey the story in a natural and unobstructed fashion, this means having the right equipment and the budget for that equipment. I have DP’d a number of short films at university as well as working with the NFTS and other productions as a member of the camera or lighting teams. I am excited to tell the story of Northbound and work with our team to create a great piece of cinema.
Please consider supporting this film as it would mean the world to me for this project to be realised at its full potential.