Cinematography – Shooting ‘Addiction’

Currently I’m busy working on the first cinematography project. The concept is each of us is given 1 min to fill, the challenge is to use natural light only, then we all decide on what the main plot is and what our part will be about. The next step was to agree on how each part would connect together while still retaining a personal visual style. Each of us is our own D.O.P (Director of Photography) and creating something from natural light can be a challenge. At the moment we are limited to about 9 or more hours of useable light to film with which for me meant I had to film at night. Not good. There’s four of us in the group, Chris Lovelock, John MacDonald, Nathan Skeels and Me, that equals 4 mins.

We shot the entire piece on a canon 550D with the standard 18-55mm kit lens as the wide angle lens and a 50mm F1.8 prime lens. We also used the dolly and tracks.

The idea took form as a very cinematic looking piece that highlighted the pitfalls of being addicted to drugs. Be it coke, heroin, booze or even cigarettes. My part was to shoot the part where our protagonist is under a spell of heavy use of drugs. His mind is nowhere and everywhere. What he hears might not be there or necessarily real. I wanted it be black and White because this reflected the fact that taking drugs is very black and White. The outcome is never good. The visuals and sound tell a very different story creating a sense of confusion and disorientation.

The next stage is editing. We’re using Final Cut studio to edit each of our one mins, each separated into our own sequence and all files sorted into our own bins while all being on one scratch disk.

Here’s my one min:

Addiction – Part II from Craig Fields on Vimeo.

The final version is somewhat much different to what I had expected. I haven’t made it exactly black and white. The contrast is very high, the blacks are really very black and theres a lot of green/blue in there. It’s not as extreme as I had hoped it to be and the foley sound is a bit loose.

The final version including the others 1mis will be uploaded as soon as I get a copy of it.

ENJOY :)