Substance

I had the pleasure of being Director of Photography and Colourist for this short film, that picked up 3 awards at the screening night for Best Script, Best Actor and Best Actress! 

We were given the title “Substance” and the genre “Comedy” on the Friday morning and had to have the whole film written, shot, edited, graded and rendered by the Sunday. It was a brilliant challenge and meant that everyone involved had to be creative and think on the fly to get the project over the line. 

We shot this over about 5 hours in 4 locations across Cork City. I really enjoyed the run and gun style of filmmaking that I was forced into by the challenge. I had to think critically and quickly to keep everything flowing and get enough footage for an edit. Working without lights as well made me really pay attention to my surroundings more and make the light work for me rather than working the light itself.

Shooting on the Sony FX6 and in SLOG-3 profile, I knew it’s dynamic range capabilities and that we would have a lot of information to work with in the colour grade to polish the details we couldn’t control on such a tight schedule.

You can see the full film and some stills below!