Lami Okrekson discusses the NFTS graduate film, Day Out, with a focus on precise visual storytelling, blending technical control with expressive cinematography. 

A heartfelt family story meets a camp, high-energy heist—exploring bold visuals, dynamic movement, and vibrant cinematic influences. 

British Cinematographer (BC):Please can you share an overview of your film?  

Lami Okrekson (LO): Seventeen year old Michael hatches a bold plan to break his grandfather, George, out of the hospital and fulfil his final days at home. Their unforgettable journey becomes a celebration of love, life and the unbreakable bond between the two generations. 

BC: What were your initial discussions about the visual approach for the film? What look and mood were you trying to achieve?    

LO: We both wanted to capture the intensity of a heist movie with the sentimentality of a family drama. The trick was to find a way to combine these two quite oppositional ideas and find where they intersected. We tried to do this by using the natural beats and breaks in the story to dictate the visual language.     

In the earlier parts of the film we decided on slow, considerate and intentional framing to really push the sensitivity of the familial dynamic. We opted for sustained shots with subtle, motivated camera movement. As we progressed throughout the story we decided to increase the tension adding more pace to our camera movements and really allowing for the audience to feel unsettled.    

BC: What were your creative references and inspirations? Which films, still photography or paintings were you influenced by?    

LO: I’m constantly finding inspiration through art and images and have folders of inspirational images on my computer. I started by going through these and highlighting any images I thought were relevant which then prompted an initial back and forth image based dialogue with the director.    

Although at its heart this was a film about freedom, loss and escape the director and I really wanted to leave space for brevity through a camp and colourful perspective much like the work of Rodrigo Prieto in Broken Embraces. Early on in the prep process we booked out a cinema and watched Broken Embraces together to really start sparking those initial creative discussions and get us thinking about the visual language of the film.     

BC: What filming locations were used? Were any sets constructed? Did any of the locations present any challenges?    

LO: Everything was shot on location with the exception of the hospital room. This room was designed and put together by Siddhant Vats in an empty office room in Pinewood. Our biggest challenge of the film was turning Pinner High School into a bustling hospital.    

BC: Can you explain your choice of camera and lenses and what made them suitable for this production and the look you were trying to achieve?    

LO: We felt this was a spherical film as we wanted to really box in our characters and ground them in the story. We felt this would help to keep the image natural and almost claustrophobic.    

I’m a big fan of film, I love the richness, texture and softness that comes with it and I always try to bring some of these elements into my work when shooting on digital. I didn’t feel like film was the right medium for this story but I did want to take the edge off of the sharpness of the Alexa’s sensor. For this reason, I decided to go with the ARRI DNA lenses combined with black pro mist filters as I felt this combination of vintage glass and diffusion would really soften the image and allow us to really tap into the vulnerability of the characters. Although this is a heist movie at its core, the story was very sentimental to the director and I wanted to use the image to explore that.   

BC: What role did camera movement, composition and framing and colour play in the visual storytelling?    

LO: We wanted to keep this film as dynamic and exciting as possible and so during our shot listing process we devised some quite elaborately choreographed shots.     

For camera movement we looked at films like Goodfellas and Ashes and Diamonds which featured stylish and motivated camera movement and really helped us figure out how best to use the camera to cover each scene.   

BC: What was your approach to lighting the film? Which was the most difficult scene to light?    

LO: As this story was grounded in reality I really wanted to keep the lighting simple, really leaning into what was already available and playing off of that. Most of that meant firing our big HMI sources through windows and mainly controlling what was already present.    

One of the more challenging aspects of this film was getting the light and time of day right in our hospital bedroom set build. Luckily we managed to get a derelict ground floor office in Pinewood which meant the gaffer and I knew we would have access and control of the windows. The most challenging aspect of this particular set was having a consistently believable lighting set up that would also fluctuate in a natural way as the story progressed.    

BC: What were you trying to achieve in the grade?    

LO: We really wanted bring out the rich colour and tone we had captured on the day    

BC: Which elements of the film were most challenging to shoot and how did you overcome those obstacles?     

LO: We went into this project with big and elaborate ideas and I feel the biggest challenge during the whole process was problem solving to find efficient ways to get our vision across with the resource we had.