My short film ‘SELFIE‘ has just been made a Vimeo Staff Pick. I’m really grateful to the Vimeo guys for picking it out in such a way.
On Vimeo’s advice, I thought I’d put together a sort of behind the scenes article about ‘SELFIE‘, in this case centred on our approach to the film’s cinematography. I’d like to share some Before and After shots with you, to show how remarkably faithful we remained in Production to the decisions we made in Prep.
My friend Jon, who joined us on the day we planned our shots, played Trisha for us. I’d like to apologise to him for sharing these photos…!
On the advice of Director of Photography Chris O’Driscoll, we planned pretty much every shot in ‘SELFIE‘ using an amazing app called Artemis. I’m normally made nauseous by people extolling the virtues of an app, but Artemis really is brilliant. It’s a virtual director’s viewfinder that allows you to take photos of your intended shot and save it along with lens and camera information. The preview images, as you’ll see, are very accurate.
Here’s our opening shot:
And here’s what we planned through Artemis several weeks beforehand:
Here’s another shot that I took in Artemis:
And the final article:
Another before:
And after:
While I know the practice of pre-planning your shots is nothing new, I was really pleased in Post when I noticed just how similar the finished product was to the shots we agreed upon beforehand. On a low-budget short like SELFIE, having your shots locked, with all the information your camera department will need printed below it, saves you a lot of time on set. Even more so in a pokey house location.
Once again, I’m absolutely indebted to Chris O’Driscoll for his suggestion we undertake the exercise in the first place. We’d probably be still shooting SELFIE now if we hadn’t…
BEN A. WILLIAMS 