Tag: Movies

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Photographic Pictorial

Jacob Proctor’s new short, ‘A Sunny Morning’

On-set still, featuring Charlie Cox and Sophia Myles

While working my way up the ladder of ‘stills photographer’ on movies, I did a lot of short films. Several of the directors I worked with on those shorts have become friends who I’ll go out of my way to work with again, including Tristan Versluis, Ryan Haysom and Jacob Proctor. The first short I did for Jacob was Mother Time (on Vimeo here) a couple of years ago, and then Collectables (photo gallery on my blog here) a year or so later.

He recently wrote and directed a new short, A Sunny Morning, shooting over the course of a weekend in a house in Greenwich (the Art Director, Melanie Light, emptied a lounge and converted it into a bedroom). Like Collectables it features just two characters, played by Sophia Myles and Charlie Cox, and was shot by Director of Photography Trevor Speed.

When the film has completed editing, Jacob intends for it to be a calling card for his directorial skills and has been building an online following around the film and it’s cast using Twitter (follow them here) and a blog-based website (over here).

My involvement started with some concept photography for the website, followed by production stills on set. The film is about a woman called Grace who is on the brink of a life-changing decision following an argument with her husband and jealousy of her best friend’s career success. To create the mood, Jacob wanted to illustrate the website with specially-shot photographs of Grace’s ashtray, books, and a ring lit by soft, natural light and so one Saturday morning around a month before the actual shoot we set up in his own bedroom and shot the arrangement in as many ways as we could think of to give the website designer something to play with.

I wanted to post a few of my own favourites from that day, which you can see below. The film’s Twitter account will be releasing more stills from the set as they accumulate more followers and Facebook friends, so take a moment to add your support and they’ll get released that bit quicker 🙂

Here’s the social network links for the film one more time:

• their blog
• on Twitter
• on Facebook









On-set still, featuring Charlie Cox and Sophia Myles

Thanks for reading – feel free to comment below.

Categories
Editorial Photographic Pictorial

adam deacon’s anuvahood – in UK cinemas from March 18th, 2011!

I shot the stills for Adam Deacon’s directorial debut, Anuvahood at the end of summer last year (2010) and they’ve just flipped the switch on their website – visit it here – which is packed with video and photos to keep your bad man satisfied till da real ting hits da streets on March 18th.

Ahem.

I had a great time on this job – as well as co-directing with Daniel Toland, Adam wrote the script with co-star Michael Vu and obviously cared a hell of a lot about how it all turned out, throwing himself into both the acting and directing on set with untiring passion and enthusiasm. From my point of view as the stills guy, the set was generally a really fun place to be, lots of laughs, dancing and random spontaneous singing and rapping, as well as several scenes with the real life residents of the North London estate we used crowding round to cheer on a pretty big bust-up…

I have to say I genuinely missed the whole cast and crew once filming wrapped. In the meantime, here’s the official trailer and a selection of the official promo photos, taken by yours truly.

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Editorial Photographic Pictorial

on the set: Collectables

In Summer 2009 I was asked to go along and shoot some stills on the set of a short film called Collectables, written and directed by Jacob Proctor. I’d worked with Jacob before, on his previous short, Mother Time so I knew several of the crew already, particularly Trevor Speed, the director of photography. It’s always nice to see a few friendly faces when you arrive on a new set. The film is complete now and Jacob is entering it festivals and competitions so I thought it would be a good time to share some of my favourite shots and drum up a little publicity for it.

The story concerns a man who works on a railway line keeping it free of litter and obstructions. Every day he walks the route collecting what others discard and keeping the choicest pieces for himself, which he tags and displays in his little brick shack next to the tracks. One day he discovers a rolled up carpet, inside which he makes an unusual discovery…

Starring Christopher Adamson (Pirates of the Carribean) and Amrita Acharia (soon to be seen in HBO’s Game of Thrones), my one day on set was a pleasure to photograph. The art departments had done a fantastic job dressing the shack with various bits of junk he’d collected over the years, each one individually tagged by hand. And we were in a real brick building, by a real line that was out of use at the time. And as you can see, very photogenic actors.

If and when the film makes it online, I’ll link to it here. For now, enjoy these shots.

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Photographic

a pretty cool milestone

1DA_0501.JPGA few weeks back I mentioned that the website for 1 Day had gone live, a movie I did some stills for in 2008. It opens next week and today I arrived at work to discover a bunch of my photos from it on page 3 of The Independent. It turns out the film, which is set in Birmingham and centres on street gang warfare punctuated by rap musical numbers, is being turned down by certain chain cinemas in the city after a West Midlands police officer informally suggested to the manager of the Birmingham Odeon that he shouldn’t show it. The manager then spoke to other cinemas who also agreed not to show it, although there are several others that will.

Anyway, despite the negative connotations of the story itself, it was pretty cool to see several of my shots in print in such a high profile article. On the way home I picked up the latest Empire and found they’d reviewed the film and in so doing had given me my first ever publicity still in print within their covers, which I’m pretty stoked about. I’ve had shots in plenty of listings pages and some industry magazines, which is very satisfying, but Empire is something else so I’m just riding on that little cloud at the moment!

Cheers!

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Categories
Editorial Photographic Pictorial

on the set: not alone

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Not Alone writer & director, Tristan Versluis
I first met Tristan Versluis (pictured left) about 2 years ago when I answered a crew-call ad placed in Shooting People for a focus puller. Obviously I’m no focus puller, but I’d been bitten by the unit stills bug doing a few freebies on shorts for friends of friends and was looking for something new to shoot. The ad in question had been placed by Stuart White, the director of photography on Tristan’s short Pixel (2007), and I replied to ask if they needed any production stills on the same expenses-only basis that most short film crews agree to. They did, I signed up, and I ended up shooting not only the production shots but also all the effect and texture reference shots for the CG artists.

Since then Tristan has completed two other shorts, I Love You (2008) and Questions (2009), the former of which I was able to work on as well. If there’s one thing in common with all of these, it’s Tristan’s preferred flavour of gruesome prosthetics effects, unsurprising considering his career as a prosthetics designer on the likes of Hot Fuzz (2007), Sweeney Todd (2007) and Prince Caspian (2008). He’s earned himself the affectionate nickname “Doctor Versluis” amongst friends and actors because of his gentle, methodical ‘bedside manner’ working with actors during the long and tiring process of applying the prosthetics, and he brings the same calming focus to the directorial chair, making it a pleasure to work with him.

For his first feature (self-written, like his shorts) he’s teamed up with Andy Thompson from Dead On Arrival Digital in the producing chair, the writer and director behind The Scar Crow. He’s also made sure to bring along practically all the key crew from his shorts, including Stuart White as Director of Photography, Melanie Light as Production Designer, Tiernan Hanby as 1st AD and Trevor Speed pulling focus, so it felt more like a reunion than a weekend of work.

The movie is called Not Alone and while you can get the full sell on their official website, the story basically follows a troubled young woman (Lucy Benjamin) in 1958 America seeking an escape from haunting memories of a gruesome massacre, and finding completely the opposite at an old cabin out by the coast. Needless to say, it doesn’t go at all well and there’s a lot of blood.

Reading the script I had to wonder if Tristan was deliberately making his life difficult shooting in the UK to recreate 1950’s West Coast USA but on arriving at the location (left) I was extremely impressed with the set. They’ve managed to find and secure an absolutely perfect existing cabin on the Norfolk coast, eerily isolated among windswept fields just yards from a ragged coastline, as well as a pair of beautiful genuine 1950s American vehicles, a Dodge and a Chevrolet, which absolutely sell the setting. Mel Light told me that in just the first few days it was already one of the best-looking productions she’d worked on and peeking at the monitor during takes I’m very excited about seeing the finished film.

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