Dark Country – A Western Adventure Part 1
September 25th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
This August I was asked by director Rick Roberts to be D.O.P on a short film called “Dark Country”, a tale of revenge based in the wild west! A great opportunity for me and it would be a real test of my skills. The production was going to be just over a week-long and would mainly be contained with-in a western town called Laredo, this place was amazing and was the same place the TV series Deadwood Was filmed and the Grounds For Divorce music video for Elbow as well as many, many other credits.
I decided to shoot the film entirely on two Canon 5DMkII’s, all with L series glass, mainly primes 24, 50, 135 as well as 70-200. There was a a lot of the scenes shot with a Redrock Micro shoulder which worked out really well in giving the feel of un-ease as well as being able to move around the actors and grab shots quicker. I really pushed these cameras to the limit and apart from when a card started to crash on me the first day, everything kept on working. The set was often quite dark and additional light was needed. For this I used a set of Daedo lights which are awesome for picking out areas and some 2K redheads for really filling the rooms. However saying this, i never really had to use any more that 3 lights as the glass and camera was always more than happy with the conditions. Focus was controlled by a pair of Letus follow focuses (one for each rig) and a Marshall and Sony set of monitors all mounted on a Letus cage. Oh and my very talented 1st AC Adam Verity was also as important!
Needless to say, the whole experience was FANTASTIC and with out a doubt, the best experience I have ever had being a camera! I have never filmed any “Drama” before, but man is it a lot of fun. It’s so tense and as you see the actors doing their thing and in your head you linking it up and knowing how it will cut and look……Its an incredible feeling which I wont forget!
The next stage is to get the film edited which I am also in charge of and i cant wait! Unfortunately though that’s about all i can tell you about the film for now, as it’s all “hush, hush” until its festival season again which we have high hopes for, however look out for a posting of a trailer as that will be out first! Until then here is a screen grab from a scene which nearly made me deaf while attempting to “get the shot”.
