Mise en Abyme

The inspiration for this was initially a short film about John Baldessari. However, since the personality of the protagonist differed significantly from the inspiration film, a different approach to filming the conversation was adopted. The first steps were to setup a moodboard for the visual style of the film, and then a production plan was created. The questions for the interview were included in the production plan and were deliberately open ended to invite answers with depth that could lead the conversation into interesting tangents.

I lost a lot of the raw data as one of my SSD’s on the laptop failed, but luckily I’d exported a rough cut with a good amount of clips that I knew I would definitely need in the final cut.

The cameras used were Sony A7S2 and A7S3, along with a portable DJI Pocket 2 to capture a bit of BTS. The lighting setup included a large Tungsten panel and an ARRI 1K Fresnel light, which the protagonist was kind enough to let me use. The Tungsten panel was the key light for the shoot, with no fill light. The ARRI 1K was kept outside the room and was shot in through the back window with a blue gel filter to help with distinguishing the background and creating the sunlight effect on it. Overall, the setup was simple and achieved the desired effect.

The most time consuming part was the color grading. All the footage was shot in Slog3 and then a multi-step color correction and grading process was followed to try and achieve the film look. The halation effect and smooth highlight and blacks roll off was a part of the color grading process. The final look was not as close to the film look as I’d anticipated, so I dialled it back a little and went for something that looked the best in the scopes as well as on the screen, given the amount of time I had to work on this project.

In terms of audio, there was a little disappointment. The wooden flooring of the location creaked when walked upon, and can be heard at a couple of places in the film. It was present at many times initially, but luckily those could be removed in Adobe Audition, however at 2 places, it wasn’t possible to edit out the creaking.

All in all, with the time constraints and unforeseen disasters (SSD failure), the film turned out fine. It encompasses the important bits about filmmaking while familiarizing the viewers with the protagonist, their story and their style.