Director of Photography
A Russian Student film, about the experience of having serious panic attacks, that I worked on after meeting Nickolay, his partner was working on a short film and asked me to help out. As soon as I arrived on set they told me that the person supposed to be filming couldn’t make it and so they wanted me to do it. Another factor was that the actor couldn’t speak English and so everything had to be spoken in Russian and then in English. Although the crew could speak English, their level of English proved to be difficult to understand the directors vision.
Below shows me and the director blocking and camera rehearsing at the same time as time was of the essence and I only found out I was filming it on the day:
Below shows the director, protagonist and myself looking at the previous shot to double check we captured it how we wanted it:
Below shows two pictures, one showing the director showing me what she visioned for that particular shot, and me setting up a shot that I added to the shot list:
Below shows a rehearsal on one of the takes:
Call-sheet for the shoot:
I asked the Director, Tea Kankia, if she could give me a testimonial on the shoot. I gave three criteria points for the responsibilities of a DOP taken from “The Camera Assistant’s Manuel”, – David E. Elkins, 2013.
Testimonial from the Director of the shoot, Tea Kankia:
The final film edited:
https://yadi.sk/i/939VzJ6fIq66Jw
I believe, no matter how small the shoot was, it was still an experience I am very grateful to have. It was a real test of having absolute communication whilst on set because of the language barrier. I did my best to suggest alternative shots wherever I could. Sometimes these suggestions were met with agreement and sometimes it strayed too far away from what the director wanted. All the punch in tracking shots were suggested by me. Unfortunately, the one tracking shot I filmed developed into an extreme close-up, but the director chose to cut it short, which is not the shot I had in mind. Although I would say I am happy with how it turned out, I would have loved to have proper tracking or at least a Gimbal to make the tracking and long shots look better as they are quite shaky. Whether the director was just happy with whatever she got, she said that the shakiness added to the mood of the character being disorientated.
The overall experience was amazing, but it was very unusual to see how Russian film crew run the floor. The weird shots were exactly what the director asked for. She said that she wanted it to feel very enclosed and to mimic how the actor was feeling during his panic attack.
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