KEEPING IT PRACTICAL Writer and director Kevin Walls’ debut feature, Premature, is a contemporary romantic comedy following flatmates Cameron (James Rottger) and Eilidh (Elle Watson) after their drunken one-night stand results in an unexpected pregnancy. When Eilidh discovers she can’t go through with a termination, the pair are forced into an awkward, absurd and increasingly … Read more
A COMPLEX OPERATION Charlie Painter runs through his approach to lensing Second World War film Operation Dynamo – with which he has a very close connection. Eighty-six years ago today, my great-great-uncle, Jack, was fighting for his life in Dunkirk. Operation Dynamo is a true account of his escape, and how the selfless sacrifice of an … Read more
INTO THE UNKNOWN Starring Sleaford Mods leading man Jason Williamson, short film Unknown Male says a lot while saying very little – with visuals from DP Rufus Wilson setting the tone in stunning style. How did you first get involved with Unknown Male and what appealed to you about the story being told? Luke Radford … Read more
SOAP OPERA DIGEST Chris Ramage GBCT runs through the comprehensive camera and lighting package he relied on when making soaps history with Corriedale. When I was initially approached by director Duncan Foster to DP both of ITV’s flagship soaps Emmerdale and Coronation Street for a unique one-off co-production, I was delighted to be in the frame – especially when I was told it would … Read more
EARNED SUCCESS Cinematographer Mattias Troelstrup explains how he and his team created emotional and atmospheric visuals in overcast Manchester and sunlit southern France for The Stolen Girl. How did you get involved with your project and what appealed to you about the story being told? Eva Husson, the director, reached out to me to discuss … Read more
CRAFTING EMOTIONAL RESTRAINT Little Rock, directed by Nick Tree, is a six-minute short created in support of the charity Younger People with Dementia. It follows an earlier collaboration with the charity, which starred Kate Dickie (The Witch), but this time features Amelie Pease (Adolescence) in the lead role. While the story is fictional, it reflects … Read more
THE LENS AS THRESHOLD While building a world that blends visual languages, Swarnim Gawade found inspiration in 12mm for Cyclops. When director Stefanos Papageorgiou and I began building the visual language of Cyclops, our central challenge was world-building. The film moves through several distinct psychological realities: the cramped, grimy hideout of the criminals in an … Read more
DESCENT INTO IMMERSION On Abandoned, writer, director and producer Joby Stephens built a new production grammar for horror. Combining Sony Venice 2 cinematics with a remotely controlled FX3 system running across a custom multi-point AP network, the film shifts from scale and beauty into something more immediate, unstable and lived in. The result is a … Read more
ADVENTURES IN EKTACHROME Cinematographer Owain Wilshaw runs through the challenges and opportunities that shooting on 16mm Kodak Ektachrome provides – after lensing Sofía Petersen’s directorial debut, Olivia, entirely in the format. Olivia, the directorial debut of Sofía Petersen, is a feature film which was photographed on 16mm Kodak Ektachrome. As far as we are aware, … Read more
LENSING SUBURBIA The ‘Burbs DP Jonathan Furmanski reveals how he helped to remake a classic movie for a modern TV audience. Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to work on all kinds of projects at all kinds of locations, including studio soundstages, but I’d never tackled a studio-based show before The ‘Burbs, a streaming reboot … Read more
PLAYING WITH THE VISUALS Alternative quartet Daytime TV have unleashed their most explosive work to date with the release of their pounding comeback single “Pause”, forged in the turbulence of the modern world under music label Marshall Records. Director Matt Chandler first approached me with the intention of wanting to capture a visually trippy, disorderly … Read more
READY FOR ACTION Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Never is this axiom more relevant than when you are asked to shoot an action-comedy road movie in just 15 days. The US-funded feature film Reckless, starring Scott Adkins, Vinnie Jones and newcomer Nicole Deon, gave exactly that challenge to DP Stuart White and his team. Shot … Read more
NAILING VISUAL LANGUAGE Cinematographer Fyras Slaiman explains how he worked with director-star Zhizi Hao to execute the visual language of bittersweet romance Vocabulary. Vocabulary, directed by Zhizi Hao, is a story that has been in the works for a few years. The story about a chunky, gay, Asian man learning a new English slang word … Read more
Written and directed by Kogonada, zi follows a young woman whose chance encounter with a stranger changes the course of her life. Cinematographer Benjamin Loeb FNF and additional cinematographer Sheldon Chau explain how they helped to craft the film through a “desire for something different”. How did you get involved with the project and what … Read more
CRAFTING A STYLISTIC HORROR SHORT Cinematographer Marti Guiver and director Ethan Evans explain how camera and lighting choices helped shape the horror in their Sony Future Filmmaker Awards finalist short Outside Noise. Made to reflect the modern horrors of doomscrolling and the effect it has on our psyche, Outside Noise is a tight, supernatural horror … Read more