Sole Mates

'In a quaint little village and adorably timid girl falls head over heels with a pair of shoes'

I was going to say we have started pre-production for our end of year films but really we are nearing the end actually, as we are the first film shooting on Monday!
I am Director of Photography on Gavins film 'Sole Mates'. I have really enjoyed pre-production from our side, we have worked well so far as a team and taken all challenges that have come our way. However I have found the most challenging thing to be the lack of organisation from the Academy. We were given actors from 3rd year who had chosen film as their elective and now none of them are available. 

Lucy -sexless girl, working in the charity shop, doesn't belong to her generation.

I like Gav's script and I'm glad to be working on Sole Mates, we work well together and have turned our flat into a production office, so we're never not talking about it. The script is quite interesting from a DP point of view. 

I have been reading as much as I can about the RED and lighting handbooks, however I know this is just to ease my mind just now because as soon as you go on set everything always changes and you have to think on your feet. Im not a good planner and I like to experiment but I know that we have so little time with our mammoth shotlist, which I need to cut down again...I have also found this part of DPing very tricky as I have still got too many shots and i fear that if I cut any more it just won't flow because it needs this many. Im concerned to say the least. The script has about 28 scenes so it was always going to have quite a few shoots...

We have started RED camera classes with Ray this week also, these have been great! I really, really wanted to work on the RED for these films to allow us to try something new and to apply skills we've learnt from our grad experiences.
We have all tried building the RED and had a crash course in using all the prime lenses and follow focus. I think this will be excellent on set except that as DP I have to choose which lenses I want for each frame, and without seeing each Im still unsure...so Ray let me film myself at the same distance with each lenses to see the difference.The 50 mm looked the best for this it made the background seem much further back bringing me out of the background more, which I thought looked nice. However Im still a bit unsure about this on set as Im not experienced with the RED. So I am very excited but I am also very apprehensive about my own performance as a DP.

TPA have made a start on the shop and I look forward to seeing the end result, with the handmade sign etc. We have Albert and Gladys cast too and they are very good apparently. Now Im just hoping I don't have a major panic attack, that the heels arrive and that we get an actress!