Operator

The movie takes place in Chicago. Working with the budget, I had to recruit a local crew. I interviewed each of the keys available there. And put together a young and extremely dynamic crew involved and motivated who supported the film from day one and whom I had the chance to recommend to other colleagues filming in Chicago afterward.
We agreed very early with Logan that we wanted to settle as many questions as possible in preparation and leave nothing to chance during the shoot.
We did preparation on-site in Chicago for four weeks.
The same type of configuration as Behold the lamb, all departments in one place.
We did not "storyboard" but completely shotlist the film scene by scene during the preparation.

We decided to give Joe and Emily a distinct color, which goes through their clothes as well as their own decorating environment.
Joe is cyan blue, Emily is orange. (we gave them Pantone references) the desk lamp, the walls, the accessories... From the costumes to the decoration we all used these color codes for the personifiers.

Then we based the camera movements on the psychology of main characters. While remaining subtle. We have developed a scale of stress for each characters with Logan from 0 (calm and happy) to 10 (panic attack).
At 0 the camera moves gently stable and controlled, at 10 we run handheld with a narrow shutter and loss of focus...
The film was shot entirely on location (apartments, offices, etc.) over 23 days of shooting.

Among the other technical specificities of the film, we shot with an Arri Amira because we had won an Arri grant which offered us the camera for the duration of the shoot. We managed with Cory Solon, my 1st AC, to put the Amira on the first Ronin at the time, for the opening credits shots where we follow Joe on his morning jog. (the ronin was mounted on a gardener’s vehicle, I operate with the joystick).

I have shot with the standard speed Zeiss set (T2.1) and a Lensbaby in PL mount for Distorted Visions when Joe cracks.
All the theater play scenes were shot with three Sony A7S to have a more electronic texture and to benefit from the sensitivity of 3200 ISO because the room was a cube paint in black with a ceiling 2.5m high. filled with the public.



The film was color graded on Baselight at Sony with Damien Van Der Cruyssen, we reunion with great joy.

Going straight to the point made the film a very pleasant and refreshing experience.
Totally because of Logan who set the mood.
As well as an invested crew who gave it all.
We had the chance to meet up afterward at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin where the film had its premiere in the vision selection.

Official Trailer