Shadow of a Rising Hope
“I remembered my friend Valentin Tissot has a collection of WWII uniforms. He is passionate about WWII re-enactments here in France. There are these groups all across the country that celebrate the Allied liberation of Europe. And so Valentin is a member of one of these ‘passionate' re-enactment groups.”
“We both thought his US soldier uniform was perfect for this project. The idea formed around a lone American soldier who is separated from his company and is under machine-gun fire from the Germans. The present tense of the story consists of the moment where the soldier is sitting on the rock remembering his fiancée's words, contrasted with flashbacks of beauty and terror. This is where parallel editing really works, above all, because of the writing liberty it gives to me in editing. The challenge is all about creating contrast through scene selection, voice over, sound design, color grading, and the way everything falls into place.”
“One of the central tenants for my work in general comes from Fyodor Dostoevsky, who wrote "Beauty will save the world”. I explored this theme through the American soldier's fiancée, telling him to hold onto the beauty in his life; all the while, surviving the terrors of war. I love this kind of mindset and for me, it's a way to inspire others see beauty in their lives. There are so many bad things happening right now in the world, so I want my filmmaking to share a message of hope, even if it is just in the small seemingly insignificant moments of life. And so his fiancée reminds the soldier to hold on to the little things, like the light that comes through the leaves in the morning, or the sweetness of clean water from the stream.”
“It was kind of an uncommon process, because I started with the global idea and filmed before having the voice over! I wrote the shot list the night before the shoot. It became important that each scene matched the words he would hear. After the shoot, I then shared the footage with Jackie Minton, who is a singer-songwriter from Dallas, Texas. As an American, Jackie was able to climb into the mind of a WWII soldier's fiancée and find just the right words for this story in light of the images we had captured.”
“Valentin Tissot, who plays the soldier, is also a photographer and videographer so he intuitively understood how I was trying to frame each scene. Having two wonderfully creative collaborators like Jackie and Valentin, meant we could achieve a great deal with just the three of us.”
“The location I chose is just outside of Le Puy en Velay, which of course, is the other character in this film. Seven years ago, I rediscovered Mount Mezenc and its surroundings which are less than an hour away from my hometown. It stands 5,700 feet high. In this region, we are spoilt for choice with incredible locations to choose from, including waterfalls, gorges and ravines.”
“We shot on the 16th of January, which is winter here in France. We completed the shoot in about 5 hours from midday until 5pm, just before the sun went down. You can see how amazing the light is at this time of year, so beautiful and soft. The scene where the soldier is sitting on the rock had the perfect light with an amazingly soft highlight roll off on his helmet. And his face too, has this incredible realism to it. I loved the way the 6K sensor in the Blackmagic Cinema Camera easily captured all of the textural details in this scene, from the fibres in his overcoat to his scarf, and even his beard. I must confess I did get some criticism about the beard, as a soldier back then had to be clean shaven. This has something to do with the seal on their gas masks!”
“I think there could be few other poster shots for this film. One of them has to be towards the end of the film where he is walking in the field into the setting sun with the forest to his right. I love this scene because the composition, the contrast and the sun illustrate the title of this short-film. This is the sort of natural light that I love to capture and share through out my filmmaking.”
“We were very blessed with the weather that day. The fog came and went several times throughout our shoot. It allowed me capture theses wonderful light beams through the forest. Also, at this time of the year, the sun stays low in the sky so the light in the mist wraps around the landscape. It really does give you this beautiful soft glow to work with that makes everything look three-dimensional.”
“Two other scene that I love are when the soldier is hiding behind the tree and when he is hearing a plane coming above him. I appreciate the way Valentin acted. I even had some feedback from viewers saying that these particular cuts reminded them of a video game cinematic.”
"Again, the highlight roll-off and the dynamic range of my camera captured these moments beautifully. My camera has a Mofage Poco L-to-PL mount adapter that comes with drop-in VNDs, so quickly getting the right exposure anytime by just using Blackmagic's False Color and this VND, was very convenient and easy.”
“The Laowa anamorphic lenses were PL mount, so the Mofage Poco adapter had a good strong fit with the BMCC 6K L mount. I shoot mostly Blackmagic Raw 12:1 at ISO 400 with this 6K Full Frame sensor. I use two approaches to exposing my images. Most often, I expose for the character's skin tones. Other times, I expose for the highlights, making sure they don't clip so I can capture as much information as the sensor can handle and then adjust the shadows and midtones later in DaVinci Resolve. I increasingly favor the first approach, since it gives me the best skin tone rendition. But depending on the scene, location, and how much control I have over the light, I sometimes use the second one. In this short film, I combined both techniques which always seem to give me great looking cinematic images.”
“I found the Laowa 26-45mm and the 45-85mm were a good color match, although the 26-45mm was noticeably a softer lens. These anamorphic zooms also come with a back- focus adjustment, which I didn't mess around with. Laowa had preset the back focus on both lenses. But if I were to shoot this project again, I would definitely have taken some extra time to double check the back focus, to make sure it is perfectly adjusted. It would have probably helped both lenses to match in terms of sharpness. There was a lot of atmospheric moisture in the air, so maybe that had some effect too. I'm not entirely sure, so back focusing is definitely something I'd like to experiment with further in the future.”
“The gear I had on this shoot was my handheld rig and an Easyrig, to give my back a rest at times. Pretty much, this was all shot using one V-Lock battery on a pretty light weight camera rig. I was really happy with what we captured and how it all came together. I am also very grateful to Valentin Tissot and Jackie Minton for the passion and creativity they brought to this project.”