Eberhart, a reclusive person who lives in nature is intrigued by the arrival of a strange art exhibition that forces them to confront their own anxieties.

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During the pre-production process the director and I decided early on that we wanted to prioritise using wide angle lenses as much as we can. We decided on this because we wanted to show off the landscape and the set we designed. We also wanted to better represent the character, Eberhart’s anxiety when in the wild. We wanted to show more of Eberhart’s facial expressions to better show the audience how Eberhart is feeling in certain scenes throughout the film. We wanted to do this so we could compensate for the zero dialogue in the film, so the use of wide lenses and close ups were chosen.

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My influences for the style of cinematography throughout this film varies. There are two major specific styles that I have taken inspiration from which is the Wachowski’s ‘The Matrix’ (1999) more specifically the scene where Neo and Morpheus are in the construct. The construct is a training programme within the matrix itself, it is a large white space that acts as an infinite void. This is used to show the protagonist Neo in the new world that he has entered. This was my inspiration behind the museum in the film because I wanted to portray an infinitive void, this would be a way of giving the audience unease and representing the museum as an unearthly plain. ‘The Matrix’ (1999) has been an inspiration to me because of how it makes its audience feel and question themselves and think about what is happening in front of them and look for a deeper meaning. I also opted to always have the camera on a tripod during the scene taking place in the museum because I wanted the museum to represent order and delicacy. I wanted the museum to be pristine and I don’t think I could’ve done this handheld. I would also like to mention that shooting in the studio so we could replicate the museum was proven to be quite difficult. As we only had three walls to work with so, whenever we wanted to change angles, we would have to move the entire set around so it would make sense continuity wise. However, we did get the desired affect that we were after.

My second main inspiration comes from ‘At Eternity's Gate’ (2018) and its use of wide angles. By using a wider lens, I can paint a bigger picture for the audience and show the landscape of the world and the characters together. I went to ‘At Eternity’s Gate’ (2018) for inspiration because I like its way of showing the larger landscapes around the characters and that is what I wanted to replicate in this film. The overall mood and tone for the cinematography is excitement and fear. A specific shot that conveys this mood and tone is during act two where Eberhart is looking in the water. I have used a warm light to show their excitement and at the same time kept the camera stable, until the sound of the popping returns, this causes Eberhart to be scared and become fearful, to push this feeling I then took the light away and made the camera less stable. I did this to show that Eberhart was alone in fear and darkness.

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In post-production I graded the film. I personally feel that the grade can majorly affect the feeling of a film and that’s why I graded this film in a very specific way. I graded in a way that I felt would add to the narrative and its mood. I started out with a primary grade so I could match all the shots throughout the film, I then went through it again making tweaks and adding more stylisation to it.

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In conclusion, I feel that my work on this film represents well what I wanted to convey. Upon reflection there isn’t anything major that I would change with how I shot the film or the way I colour graded it. However, I would’ve pushed to have the wider shots I shot used in the final film as I believe that would’ve better exaggerated how large and vast the void of the museum really is. As regards to what I would change on day of shooting I think I would pay attention to the ND filter more, when grading I realised that there were subtle differences in light between shots but nothing to major that I couldn’t fix in the colour grade.

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