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In the seventh episode of Short Hand, we’re focusing our lens on cinematography and speaking to DoPs Evelin van Rei (Farewell She Goes, Petra), Olan Collardy (The Chippie, Signs, They Heard Him Shout Allahu Akbar), Anna MacDonald (My Sweet Prince, Good Thanks, You?, V) and director Jimmy Dean (V, Suzie) to get their perspective on communication, collaboration and all things cameras. 

Topics covered include: prepping for a shoot, choosing your kit, finding a shared cinematic language, thinking on your feet, lighting, recces and understanding space, embracing the emotional aspect of cinematography and how you know you’ve shot what you need. 

In terms of advice I have for young cinematographers, you have to shoot. Don’t wait until a short film to flex that muscle… Like if you’ve gone out and made your own short film…it doesn’t have to cost you money…just cut it and see how it feels and find the rhythm and the tempo. That’s how you become an asset to the production. You have to play to become a master of your craft, don’t wait until game day to flex those muscles because they’re going to be cold.

Olan Collardy

SHOW NOTES & RESOURCES

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Short Hand: Hello, you’re listening to Short Hand – A Guide to Making a Short Film – a BFI NETWORK and Film Hub South East podcast. Whether you’re actively making a short film or passively thinking about it. This is a podcast designed to help you on the journey from coming up with a compelling short film idea to editing it into a finished product. In this episode, we’re focusing our lens on cinematography. You’ll hear from three cinematographers and a director about how they prepare, shoot and make room for the magic to happen.

Evelin van Rei: Once you read a script, I think immediately you know if it’s for you or not. It’s sort of the way it’s written, the subject matter, the profile of the director, what they’ve done before, what they’re looking to do in the future. I think you’re just trying to get a bigger picture of who the director is. Where does the script come from? What does the director want to do with the script? Where’s it going? Will it lead to any future collaborations? Is this a director I want to get involved in? Do I love the director’s work? So it’s all of that and then reading the script. Is the language that’s being used the vibe that you know, sort of reflects on the pages how you visualise the script as in when reading the script, and you’re visualising the story? Is this an environment that I’d love to light? And I love to shoot where I have something to add, you know? I’ve declined projects in the past, because I’m like, I’m not the right person for this. You know, you should go with a DoP that loves these type of environments or types of stories. And I think it’s both ways to know when a script is for you when a script isn’t for you.

Short Hand: That’s Evelin van Rei, a Dutch cinematographer, based in London, who’s picked up nominations for the BSC Short FilmsCinematography Award in 2018,and 2019, for her work on the short films, Changeling and Innozenz. She is up for the Cinematography Award at this year’s Underwire Film Festival for the short film Limbo. Here she talks about meeting a director and figuring out whether you can work and collaborate together, how she prepares for a project and marrying imagination with reality.

Evelin van Rei: I think for short films, when you meet a director or get invited to meet a director, it’s a lot more informal than on feature films or TV series. And you often just grab a coffee or go to a gallery. A lot of meetings I’ve had in the past for short films have often come from people approaching me through Instagram or they see another short of mine. So I guess there’s already an understanding of who I am as a DOP. And that’s why they want to meet me as a potential collaborator. So when you meet up, you go through the script to sort of chat about each other’s inspirations generally in life, it doesn’t always have to do with that particular script. It’s more like a meeting to get to know each other to sort of feel, how you would collaborate and whether you’re on the same wave-length as human beings. It’s a people’s industry, a people’s business. So it’s more about how you get on and how you collaborate, than a particular project because there’ll hopefully will be many more.

So once the director and myself have established that I’m the right person for the project and we work together on this short film, we go through a pre-production stage, which already was a little bit established in our meeting. Obviously in the sense of me bringing visual references to the meeting, sort of visualising the script and making sure that the director and myself are on the right page. I guess pre-production is quite a broad word. It depends on the job. I’ve had jobs that has pre-production of a couple of days, to if you’re lucky, you know a few weeks. Those weeks often start with a recce. So you’ve already read the script, you’ve met with the director, you’ve established you’re gonna do this together, you sort of establish you know, the kind of images and how you want to approach it. So you go into your recce to look at the locations where you’re going to shoot the script, you have an idea in mind and often already with some shot lists that you and the director have made and potentially some storyboards. More often than not, I think for short film its generally just a shot-list and visual references like a moodboard you make and then you take those to the location. If you’re lucky you will have your gaffer there.

And often this is the stage I guess where originally you have this great idea and this is what’s going to look like and this is what we need and then also reality hits, budget constraints, COVID obviously , so you work with what you imagine and what is really out there on location. So you will go through the scripts, you go through the shot list and see what needs to be adapted, so I guess it’s mostly problem-solving. It’s about how you can realise the script from the actual location you’re shooting in, often with a production designer. So the relationship between production designer and Director of Photography is quite important. Everything needs to be sort of in-sync, making sure you’re on the same page, then you prepare yourself for your shoots.

Short Hand: Next up, Evelin discusses making kit choices and lists and getting to grips with new pieces of equipment or technology.

Evelin van Rei: So our kit choice for the shoot depends on the budget. It’s sort of always good to know what the budget is because then you can set the expectation that comes from that. Often it’ll be with companies with whom the production company has a relationship. Sometimes producers or production managers have a preference of a company and sometimes they ask the DOP if they have any preferences. And then from there, you would comprise a kit list with your gaffer after the location recce. So it depends whether it’s your focus puller or yourself who will make a kit list and it depends on the type of job. Generally I tend to start the camera kit list off and then the focus pullers and grips are cc’d in. You have the chats, you have the recces and then it becomes your final list and they take over.

Lighting is different. So for me lighting-wise, there would be discussions during the recce with the gaffer, as well about the visual language and reference images. Kit-wise I may have references to types of light I like to use or have used before or new things I want to try. The gaffer may have experience and says ‘oh, this light I discovered on my last job..’ It’s a dialogue in terms of what type of kit you’d like to use, obviously constrained by location, by budget, by what’s available out there. And then you just go back and forth a few times with production and sometimes you speak to the rental company directly if you know them and answer any questions they may have, any changes you’d like to make camera-wise.

Cameras are a lot more standard. I think you know even before recces. Producers asked me to send them a kit list. So it’s very similar kit list, especially if you’re shooting on the Alexa Mini or shooting on a Sony or it comes with standard bits. And I think as DOP you develop a way you’d like to shoot. You develop, you know, particular tools you’d like to use, what lenses, what filters, what camera preference, so you often send that off before you actually finalise things so producers can budget things a bit better.

Using a new piece of tool can be quite daunting. I remember back at university when my teacher at the time, a fantastic DOP, who taught part time said ‘don’t worry, if you don’t know piece of camera, if you don’t have a piece of kit, you will learn that on the job, take the job and figure out later how to use it, what to do’. And that is sort of true, and it goes for feature film or TV series or commercials. You have people around you that have that knowledge, people around you that specialise pieces of kit. If you’re lucky, there will be time to prep, where you can go into your rental house when your camera assistants are prepping the kit, testing the kit or maybe there’s half a day when you can play around with something, ideally do some testing. So whether it’s either for make-up, whether it’s lens choice, whether it’s sort of, you know, certain type of effects, you’re looking to create in the camera, if you’re lucky, you will have time. But I think a lot of things will happen on sets and just doing your research, you know, speaking to other cinematographers who have used that piece of kit or other camera systems, people that can support you to sort of you know, pick their brains. What about this you know? What resolution should I shoot on if I need to deliver in this format? So you have technicians around you with that knowledge, who have been in the industry for much longer than you have. But yes, it can be quite daunting to use a new piece of kit but you just gotta’ roll with the punches.

Short Hand: Finally Evelin talks about what she does in the days leading up to a new job to get ready, physically and mentally, what she looks for in a director and her advice for up and coming cinematographers.

Evelin van Rei: So preparing for the first day on a new job will be different for everyone and it’ll be different for each and every job. Some jobs I’ve had a few days notice. So you just throw everything that you were doing, throw it all away and just start on that new job and just jump in the deep end and make it work. Sometimes you have a lot more heads up. So you just make sure that any admin or things you need to arrange in your private or home life, you just sort of make sure that you do that, you plan ahead. For example, a lot of jobs I’ve done recently, where I was I just stationed like up north in a different city for a couple of months, or in Ireland for a few months. So you have to sort of arrange a few things in the sense of admin. Who’s taking care of all your plants? Or maybe for other people, children or pets. So sort of the practicality of things gearing up for a new job, it’s, you know, clearing out your laptop or your devices, you know, uploading the scripts, making sure your notes are on there. So a lot of admin type of things. And mental preparation for new jobs as well, for everyone is different, for me will be and also throughout shooting, a lot of yoga, making sure you eat properly, whatever you need as a person.

The working relationship between the director and yourself varies for each and every job. I guess the ideal is that you’re both on the same page to start with, you want to make the same film, you have the same vision. And you have the same way of working. I guess as you go through your careers, through more jobs, you come to understand, you know what type of director you work with very well, what type of director you want to build your career round. I think the most important thing is that you’re friends and that you’re allies and when things get very stressful on sets, and there’s a lot of problems to solve, time is limited. A lot of setbacks. I think if you have a relationship where you can count on each other, and support each other through whatever happens, I think it’s really important to have each other’s back.

I love to work with directors’ that have quite a strong vision and that know what they want, and are very sort of direct and honest, in communicating this. Maybe it’s because I’m Dutch European, so I have a certain way of just anything and everything can be spoken about. Like nothing is taboo and nothing is a weird question. I love the collaborative process with directors where we’re not thinking about the end result of the final product, but you’re just going through the process, sort of digging deeper into the script, you’re digging deeper into, you know, the psyche of these characters and and sort of that what you’ve done in pre -production forms the basis for your relationship with the director on set. You create a shorthand with them, you know, you’ve been through shortlist and you’ve been through storyboarding, maybe for some, you know, stunt sequences or special effects sequences, everything is sort of there. So on-set is generally about creating shorthand, communicating effectively and clearly. And having a laugh. I think it’s really important to be able to crack a joke on set. And just to enjoy it.

The main piece of advice I would give to cinematographers out there that are starting in short form, and would love to pursue a career in cinematography is to just be yourself. Focus on your own path and what you are doing, forget about what everybody else is doing on social media, what everybody else is doing, just focusing on yourself, your path, everybody is different. Everybody gets into the industry in a different way. You know, success doesn’t happen overnight.

Olan Collardy: With short films once you’ve boarded, the first thing I like to do is have a conversation with the director, just to really dig into kind of like details as to what the intentions or, what the core themes of the project are. Because when I read the script, all I’m given in most cases is just black and white text. Sometimes you do get some kind of treatment, a visual treatment that alludes to what the director is after in terms of the tone the themes and the visuals. But yeah, most times it will be just black and white text. And what I like to do is reach out to the director and have a conversation, ideally, a face-to-face conversation [because] it’s very important to just make sure you’re both on the same page in terms of just energies and temperament.

Short Hand: That’s Olan Collardy, a Nigerian-born, UK-based cinematographer and 2021 ScreenDaily Star of Tomorrow who works across narrative, commercials and music videos. He has also lensed short films such as Abraham Adeyemi’s No More Wings, which won best narrative short at Tribeca in 2020, and Nadia Latif’s – who featured in Episode Five on casting – They Heard Him Shout Allahu Akbar, part of Film4’s Foresight series. Here he’s deep-diving more into the prep that goes into a short film and establishing a visual palette and language with the director, how he puts forward his own ideas and references and the questions he might ask to interrogate how the director wants their film to look.

Olan Collardy: From a cinematographer’s perspective, you want to make sure that the way you visualise the film ahead of the conversation is apparent. One thing I like to do is I’d like to put together some reference images, sometimes it’s a bunch of photographs, just to get across how I think the images of the film should convey, I guess, the underlying themes of the film. It’s important that we’re both singing from the same hymn sheet. And if for any reason, there is a discrepancy between how I see the film and how they see the film, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just realigning yourself, just to ensure that you’re both you’re both making the same film, it’s just understanding the nuances of the story.

So sometimes, it’s like, [the director] wants the camera to be dynamic sometimes. What does that mean? Does it mean he wants to be handheld just to feel that the camera is a bit more more subjective and to put the audience in the same room with the characters? Sometimes dynamic just means I want the camera to move, but I want it to be smooth, I want the camera to feel more objective. So when people use words like you know, dynamic, it’s good to kind of really dial into what they mean by that. So you really want to dig into what people mean. You know, sometimes people say I want this film to feel warm. Now, what does warm mean? Does that mean we use warm light? Or does it mean we crank up the colour temperature of the camera to make it feel warm? Or is it something we want to do with the wardrobe? Introduce warmth in the wardrobe, introduce the warmth in the kind of locations we have. That’s what I like to tease out really quickly when I jump on board a project, just because my approach to filmmaking is very realistic. I like world-building and I like character-building. I like character-driven stories. So I want to know, you know, what the locations say about characters? What does the wardrobe say about the characters? What does the diegetic or the non-diegetic music say about the characters, because knowing these things helps me do my job better.

Short Hand: In the next segment Olan talks about what goes into his cinematography treatment, the importance of the relationship between the DP, the director and the production designer, and then how he likes that relationship to function when you migrate to set.

Olan Collardy: As I mentioned, I like to put together something I call a cinematography treatment, which is a PDF that consists of photographs, images from other films, and you know, sometimes contain notes of kind of my mind map of my response to the film. Like, what’s the theme of this film? Okay the theme is repentance. And then I draw some mind-maps on what repentance means, like, does it pertain to this character? And this character? What are the themes? Or sub-themes? So being able to present those ideas with the director, can help us figure out camera movement and blocking. How do our lenses help push those things? So yeah, alongside the images I also, sometimes put kind of location references that I have in mind that I think will help elevate the story. And these are really useful because when you’re able to show the director that you are, I suppose in your way, shape or form, you know, being an influencer, because that’s what you are as an HOD. Before we go on recces now that we are looking at, you know, the same kind of location references is something that can be passed on to locations person just to ensure that you know, we’re looking for the right kind of locations that help us tell the story. Those are the kinds of things I like to have, you know, tangibles that I can share with the director. Sometimes, you know, if the production designer is on board at that point, that’s something I can share with him as well just to make sure that that holy trinity is further aligned. You want to make sure that yeah, all three are all in sync.

When it comes to being on-set on the film, you know, I have a music background, not in the sense of me being a musician. Well, kind of. I played a lot of kind of jazz music in my mid to late teens. And the way I play music is I play or like, hearing, you know, I’m quite rusty at reading music. Now, I say that to mean, I love improvisation. But I feel that you have to have a base tone. And I think, that’s what your prep document, and what your conversations with the director does. It gives you a base tone. And you know, with jazz, we’re maintaining the rhythm. And you know, each person can then play like a riff, play a solo. And I think when you get on-set, the prep you have enables each other, based on that everyone’s working towards, but when you get on set, you know, things happen. Sometimes, you know, you are massively behind and you’ve got, you know, 10 minutes to shoot five shots, then you have to sit down and go, actually, how can we combine these five shots so that we can tell the story in two shots. So I think for me, it’s imperative to be flexible, when it comes to being on 10. I think for me, that’s the joy of filmmaking, it’s quite boring. If you know, we just painting by numbers after you know prepping, you want to leave room for some on-set magic.

Short Hand: Olan then talks about establishing trust with the actors and being able to instil confidence in them.

Olan Collardy: One of my first collaborations with actors that have then maybe gone on to become directors, like my really good friend Thea Gajic, who is an actor, and was hoping to build a reel, an actor’s reel. And, you know, we met, and we shot lots of monologues together. And you know, now she’s grown into a wonderful director. And I think for me, that really helps me understand and get into the minds of what it feels like to be to be an actor. And that’s one of the reasons why I love operating the camera because of the proximity you have to the actors on set. You are one of the first people that they look at after the take And there’s that look that they give you that like ‘Did I get it? Was that good?’ And, you know, there’s that that bond, I tend to have with actors on set. So I think for me, as a DP, or as someone who operates his camera, I think, one of your duties or responsibilities is to be able to instil some kind of confidence in your actors, just to make sure that they are in good hands. Your subject has to have a sense of comfort, that you are doing them justice, whether that’s in the way you represent them, or the way you shoot them, or the way you light them, or the ambience and the aura around you as a cinematographer or as an operator who’s you know, right next to their to the actor. These relationships are something I take very seriously again, just because I like to put my actors in the best light.

Short Hand: You’re about to hear our Olan break down a sequence that he’s particularly proud of shooting and why. And then give his advice on making sure you stay on schedule, while also leaving room for artistry and spontaneity, as well as why aspiring cinematographers should always be shooting,

Olan Collardy: There was a film I shot. I believe it was 2020 or 2019. I want to say 2020. It’s called Joy. And it tells a tale of a mother who has this wonderful relationship with a very young son and we see how the relationship between them got strained because, you know, he fell into bad circles and you know, bad situations. And yeah, not to give a spoiler, but there was a sequence where he was coming home with his mom and they were going home, and they were going through like a stairwell to their apartment. And the whole point of that sequence was just to show how he has started to make these links and bonds with some of the not-so-nice kids on the estate. And for me what was important was not to hero, the other kids, because it was more a story about the mum and how that mum felt. So what you would have thought, in shooting a stairwell, is make sure all the characters are lit and that we can see them. So as you can see the boy’s face, we can see all these menacing characters’ faces and see what their responses are. Well my instinct was to play that scene in silhouette. So just focusing on how it must feel, being that mum walking through a staircase with your teenage son amongst this group of like four or five, you know, threatening characters and figures. So yeah, it was something I was quite proud of. And I’m happy that, you know, the director bought into that, just because you don’t see those, those other kids, they’re just kind of like faceless characters, and then just brings you really into the story as to how it must have felt for that mother going in that stairwell, you know, seeing these figures who she doesn’t know, their backstory, and you know that feeling of unease, she would have had. That combined with a score that we had in that scene, I think, yeah, just really brings joy to me, because I remember on the day, you know, the AD was like ‘Okay cool, we’re about to shoot this, are we fully lit, are you good to go?’ ‘I’m like, yeah, there’s no lighting, let’s shoot.’ Yeah, I was really, really happy with how that panned out.

So in terms of being able to set yourself up for success, it’s important that you prep, I mean, we’re talking about prep, because sometimes when you go, we’ve got five days, it seems like a lot. But you know, things will always take the time you allocate them, if you say to yourself, I’m going to write a script in a year, it will take you a year to write that script. If you tell yourself I am going to write a script in seven days, you would write that script in seven days. So yeah, it’s always good to not fall into that sense of security thinking, the more days you have, the more time you have. Because no producer is going to give you five days if they don’t believe that film actually needs, you know, five days. So what you can do is prep with your director to ensure that you actually need every single scene that that you’re shooting, because sometimes you get to the edit, and it’s so painful that you’ve shot all these scenes and all these coverages, and you get to the edit, and the whole scene has to be lost. And that’s because, yeah, when it was written, we just thought, ‘Okay, here’s a shooting script, wanted to shoot everything, and then we’ll work it out in the edit’ and then you find out that scene actually doesn’t really push the story forward.

Yeah, so what you want to try and do understand is what the pacing of the film is, because sometimes a fast-paced film might mean you need more coverage. A slower-paced film might mean, let’s just have two shots per scene, because you know, these are going a really long pregnant scenes. So let’s just make sure we don’t make the edit so choppy. Also, as a DP, what you want to try and do I know it’s quite cliche to say, you light the space and then light the face. What you want to try and do is pump light into the space and see how the light falls a certain way and try and re-enact that with your artificial light. And then use a camera to find the best angle that serves the light. I suppose you’re forcing your lights to work for every angle you have. And I think working in that way will enable you to work super fast as a DP.

So yeah, try and light the space. And what I mean by that is, you know, you go on your recce and you go, ‘Oh, I like the way light falls in this room. Okay, let’s try and reenact that and have continuity. So across a five hour period, you know that light is continuous.’  And then yeah, find the angles that give you the best light within the scene, the more time you can give to the actor and the more time you can give the director and the quicker you would get that scene done. So yeah, when you see a time allocated, it’s not just about camera. It’s not just about you know, set design, it’s actually about performance. So what you can do as a DP is you know, set the film up for success by giving as much time to director and as much time for the performance.

In terms of advice I have for young cinematographers you have to shoot. Don’t wait until a short film to flex that muscle. You don’t wait until the tournament day to start running, right? Like you need to train. And what I mean by training is not just like stretching in your house, or you know reading books about running, you need to get on that track and run. Run with colleagues, run with friends so that on the on the tournament day, you’re used to it. Now what I mean by that is take a camera and in your own house, shoot a story. It’s also very important to understand editing. I think having made my own shorts, and I’ve directed, shot, edited. colour- graded. It really helps you appreciate all aspects of filmmaking and makes you more of an asset to a director. Like if you’ve gone out and made your own short film, and what I mean, by your own short film, it doesn’t have to cost you money, just get a friend to walk down like a path, you shoot them, get them to say a few words and just put them, on your computer and just cut it and see how it feels and find the rhythm and the tempo, that’s how you become an asset to the production. So you have to play to become a master of your craft, don’t wait until game day to you know, flex those muscles because they’re going to be cold.

Jimmy Dean: I think for us in terms of prepping a short film to begin with, it’s [about] discussing the emotion of the story and the feel of the film. And then when we’ve nailed down the type of film we want to make, we start talking about visual language, you know, gathering references, making some mood-boards maybe. And then the visual language kind of comes organically from the conversations we have and continue to have throughout the film.

Anna MacDonald: I think initially for prep, of course, it starts with the script. And I take that away on my own and read it. And then we come together and chat. And that initial conversation I think is so important, like just talking about the story. And usually that ends up going deeper and like where it comes from and that’s what I love about working with Jimmy because he’s super open. But often there’ll be like little things he says or something that we both thought of while we’re chatting and I’ll write those things down. And usually I keep them in like a notebook so that later when we’re talking about technical stuff even or the way the film looks, I can go back and be like, ‘Oh, you said like this is a romantic scene or this is like a really hazy moment’. Like those things might not be literal, but they help in some way. But I mean, I feel like Jimmy and I just kind of embrace the emotional side far more to begin with than the technical.

Short Hand: The voices you’re hearing now belong to writer director Jimmy Dean and cinematographer Anna MacDonald. They’ve previously worked together on the BFI-NETWORK backed short film V. And they just finished principal photography on their second short film collaboration, Susie, which was shot in and around Ipswich. Here, they discussed their working relationship, the importance of recces and giving themselves the space to play and explore while also sticking to the schedule and the budget.

Jimmy Dean: With us, the way I work and essentially the way Anna and I work together is we’re both people who need to be in a space to understand it and feel a scene. So recces are really important for us to get inside, like our location, our space and start to work it out. I’m not really someone who storyboards much, it’s very much like we take those conversations and we talk about the feeling and then it’s just translating it. So yeah, we get in a location we look around, we start to work out where our cameras are gonna’ go. I think that’s more our starting point. Still, even before shortlisting, or you know, all these things, it’s about getting inside a space and working it out from there.

Anna MacDonald: Yeah, I definitely think there are factors that push you towards a certain format or a certain camera body even. But I think when you’re working in a low budget space, like we had hopes and dreams from the get-go from our initial conversation and you hold on to those but you do have to be flexible when you know the budget is like two peanuts. So then it kind of felt like choosing like a film stock, something that’s going to provide an image that you can work with, and then figuring out the lenses on the recce for example. So I think a lot of people use Artemis, which is super helpful. So having something like Artemis, even though the lenses don’t quite match up then tells you like okay, you know, our wides are in this space and does that lens feel right for us? So like I kind of knew the edges, basically this is the widest we could get, this is the tightest but in that sense the recce is really more about understanding the blocking in the space.

Jimmy Dean: Basically, we just made a film, a short film that was predominantly set in one house, which is something that I had not done before. So part of that recce and part of the whole film was ‘how do we keep this house visually interesting?’ How do we keep our audience like visually engaged in this space? It was really good just to get inside and start figuring out what parts of the house we can use and what frames look nice. And then from there, we came away with a visual storyboard of what our film was probably going to look like. Because the challenge with the film we just shot was that each scene was gonna be one take from a locked off camera. Because that’s something in the prep, we just both got quite excited about it. So something I pitched to Anna really early on and then I was like, ‘we need to do it like this. I keep thinking about this for this film, what do you think?’ And then when Anna gets excited about something, I get really excited about something.

For me, it’s a balance that leans more towards giving yourself space to explore and play. Like there are so many amazing filmmakers who go in with the storyboard and a clear idea of what they want, I’m just not really one of them. I like the organic part of playing and exploring. So it’s really important to me that we give ourselves that space, because my favourite part of the whole thing is working with actors. And you want to give them the space to explore a scene and do something new or excite you or do something you never expected. I think one of my favourite things about working with Anna is she’s also excited about that. So when an actor does something really unexpected or amazing, or something you just love, we adapt around them. The most exciting way to find the scene is to allow people to play around, it’s great that the crew and everyone else is able to adapt around that.

Anna MacDonald: Yeah, I think if you went into a shoot day being like, I know exactly how this day is gonna go. And it has to go this way, like you would miss so much of the magic. I think most of us do film because it’s like this insane collaboration that kind of feels like a whirlwind. And I think even on the film, we just did that we committed to a single frame for each scene, even then it was like we knew we had to do seven scenes and a house. And we were like, with the budget, we’re gonna have to do all in one day, we didn’t know some spaces where we’re like, we’re gonna have to kind of like marinate on the scene, because the blocking needs to grow on the day. And we need to work with Helen. And with other scenes where like, this is how it is in our head. And it feels like it couldn’t really go too far either way. And we know it could and we would change. But I think in a way, it’s like more relaxing to go into a day like that. BecauseI feel like that’s where both of us sort of like come alive, when you’re kind of up against time or whatever. And you’ve got to make a decision. If you’ve had all those amazing story chats in the beginning and gone through the emotions, like those decisions are easy, like they tell you if they’re right or wrong. So I think yeah, both Jimmy and I would say we’re in the more jazz space of filmmaking, rather than like a very prescriptive science.

Jimmy Dean: I would quickly loop back to the film we just shot, as Anna said, we knew there was a few scenes we hadn’t fully figured out that we just needed to feel on the day. And we factored that into the schedule, telling our first AD who was amazing, like we haven’t fully figured this out yet, we’ll need like an extra 10-15 minutes just to feel it through. In terms of scheduling and getting it all done, from my perspective, you throw all trust over to the camera and other departments and how long they practically need. And then for me my big contribution to that, it’s just the performance stuff. So for sensitive scenes I push for a longer amount of time, knowing that we won’t do as many tapes, but we might need a lot of prep for it. So there’s a really emotional scene in this that was factored in. It’s just like, we need time to help the actors get there. Luckily, working with amazing actors means that scheduling becomes easier. But yeah, I’d throw over to Anna on that one. I don’t know how she gets it all done. We asked her to do unbelievable things on this film to get set up in that house and it weirdly somehow went on time.

Anna MacDonald: I mean, I think a really straightforward answer to like how do you schedule or stay on schedule or know how to allocate time is that you have to, so you make it work. [Our] script was very short in a way. I think it was like five pages in the end. But it was a long, five pages. So you know, there’s lingering and there’s the use of space. I really like to be involved in the schedule. I can’t imagine not being involved in the schedule. I said to Jimmy, ‘where you can see yourself maybe being a bit quicker?’ And so then you can buy that time to use it later. But I think it also comes down to like knowing all the pieces you need to fit in a puzzle, knowing the timeframe you’ve got, in the proper working hours, like when night starts, if there’s a scene up two flights of stairs, allocating that time for your crew to do it safely. And then in the end, there’s moments like with this dusk scene, we’re shooting our actor, she was looking out a window, we’re shooting her from outside, and we really wanted it to be like dusk, dusk, and we shot something and it was like a crazy cloud that went over a face and everyone got super excited.

And the next scene was a really, really important emotional scene. And we knew we needed a buffer for Jimmy and the actor, and we had some, like, kind of active lights that were moving in. And we knew we wanted to rehearse that. But then we were like, ‘oh, but like, it’s gonna get better outside. And it’s kind of like, okay, we’re really happy with that shot. It’s like, do you want to risk potentially staying outside and then like pushing ourselves to kind of take Jimmy’s time and this really emotional time. And then we obviously went with, ‘give Jimmy the time’, because that’s why you’re making a film. So I think you’re constantly kind of like re-addressing the day and how you can win back time and, and where you need to be like, ‘You know what, like, we’re never going to be here again, we need to do another take.’, even when everyone is screaming, which never happened on this shoot, but it does happen.

Short Hand: In the next segment, Jimmy and Anna talk about how they communicate on set, and why Jimmy invites notes from his key creatives and crew.

Anna MacDonald: We’ve got this kind of family that we’ve been developing since our first film. And it feels like we’re really lucky to be a part of it. But the triangle that is me, Jimmy and Greg Bradlaugh, the production designer, is something that I love a lot. And like there’s two examples of how it works. But, you know, we’re all very involved in like how the scene feels like beyond our own role. And what I really love about working with Jimmy is watching him do the blocking rehearsal. It’s quite magical. But then when the cameras cuts like, everyone’s silent, so that Jimmy can speak to them and keep what’s in his head. I don’t need to go up to Jimmy and be like ‘This didn’t work; or whatever. He always comes out and goes, ‘how was that for you?’ And then we discuss if there’s anything that we feel doesn’t work/ I just feel like the worst thing you could do to a director is like everyone says their notes before they get to just actors. But I think in terms of communication, Jimmy’s just very good about like honouring each person’s space, I guess and what they’re trying to achieve.

Jimmy Dean: I would say it’s more instinctive, just because I’m kind of in awe of everyone I work with and what Anna said about being a little family is really important to me. I want everyone to feel like really attached to the filmmaking and and mostly, I just really want it to be fun. I just really value everyone’s opinion on set. Like everyone’s so good at their jobs, why wouldn’t I want to open that up and take stock of what everyone has to say, and feed it into the film?

We get this myth of the auteur or like, auteurs are totally a thing. That’s great. [But] I think collaboration is the most exciting thing for me. I love that people can put their own heart and soul into the film. And I hope that anytime one of our crew members, when they see one of our films, can identify a piece of themselves in it. As Anna says, the triangle of me, Anna and Greg was really important on this. And again, , I just trust my crew completely. So when I ask them, ‘How was that for you?’ I really want to know, because I can take that on board and either implement it, try it, or if I disagree with it, it’s still good to know, because you’ve backed your own conviction, I guess. When you have full trust in the people around you, as a director, you relax more on set. And actors can be your first thought, which I think they always should be. And the story is your first thought which it should be. So you’re surrounded by people who you trust to do their own departments and make it all work. And then when you check with them how it felt for them, you know, you implement that as well.

Short Hand: Now you’re going to hear Jimmy and Anna as they break down a car scene from their latest short film ‘Suzie’ and how they planned to shoot it, but then trusted their instincts on the day to get what they really needed. And why working with people you trust and like is integral to negotiating those more pressurised moments during the shoot

Anna MacDonald: In the script we just filmed there’s seven scenes that take place in the house, one scene that takes place in the car, and one scene that takes place in a new flat. In my head, I was like, I kind of need to really interrogate what we’re looking for in the car scene. And so I made a document that I think I called ‘Car Marination’ or something, and it was just like a series of images of people in the backseat of a car and I shared it with Jimmy. And then that was really exciting because we kind of realised that we hadn’t really talked about the car beyond where they’re sitting. And this was two characters, and it’s the second to last scene. And so we started to realise it was more than just like, interior car, they drive, if that makes sense? And then, I guess getting into the practicality, we got an incredible grip to come out for us, because everything needed to be super stable, like dead static. But essentially we knew the scene so that when we got there on the day, we kind of had to challenge everyone to shoot it.

Jimmy Dean: With this car scene, it had been left towards the end of our discussion. And then when Anna sent me that document, it changed my boring idea to much more exciting frames. And we got really, really excited about that. And when we got the camera up, we found something that was just on one of the characters instead of two, so it originally started out in our heads as a two shot but we found something on one, which is just really exciting. And we did it. And then when we first went for this drive, we were trying to use available light, and the light just didn’t hit at all how we wanted it to…

Anna MacDonald: Just a side note, we did two things. We did recce the route. And that was more for like, ‘what’s in the background?’ Does it feel like Ipswich kind of vibe? And then part two is Greg Probert, my gaffer and I, part of our approach for every scene was basically starting from scratch. So like removing all available light, and then building up, because it’s something I wanted to try on this. And often they use a lot of available light for most shoots. So essentially, we didn’t do any lighting in the car and like took a trip, which was terrifying.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah. And like it didn’t happen, we got lost on the route. And it was all very stressful. But then we went back. Anna and Greg lit it beautifully. And we went around again, on this single frame. And Helen, Helen Behan’s performance in it was just unbelievable. It’s like this magic moment where like the lights were just hitting and she was she was doing her thing. And it would been really easy just to be like, tick done. Because we were in a rush where we need to get another shot after that. It was the first time on the whole shoot we were in a rush, where people were trying to get us to keep going. So we got this really beautiful performance. And it’s a really good take we’re really happy with and I just had this moment of linking back to ‘what’s the story’. And are we missing seeing these two characters, this mother and son together in this moment? We tried earlier to frame up this two shot but we didn’t like it. But we were like ‘we owe it to ourselves to try one more time’. And everyone’s telling us to move on. But we go back and it’s just one of those magical things where eventually we move the blocking enough that we get these two people together, we find the perfect frame, we go back on our route. And we’ve got the take that I feel that absolutely has to be in the film. And it now seems insane to me that we nearly did anything but that, but it was the process of getting there. And it was just so many things that took us from an original idea that would not have looked good into something that I’m now really proud of.

I only want to work with people that I love, which is really naive. But it helps because on this one, all those people want the same thing. So everyone wants to tell the story. So we were in that car. And it was me, Greg and our script supervisor Alice and our first AD Chris . And I know Chris would want us to move on. But he totally understood because everyone in that car went ‘we have to do it, we have to try it’. Anna and I have only worked together twice, which is weird because it feels like more. But you have this shorthand with people you love where you can just be honest and get to it. There’s no like having to work around people or games, you’re just like ‘we have to do it’. And if any one of us in that car says ‘you have to go again’ we have to try this. Like we all respect that because we don’t say it often, if that makes sense. So when you build that level of trust, you’re just like ‘you’re so right, we have to do it’.

Anna MacDonald: As a DP, it’s really important that you see moments where your director is getting pushed. And you also recognise when they’re not totally happy with something. And I feel like it’s different with every director and some directors might never have those moments, and some directors will have them all the time. I guess it just depends on the person. But I feel like when I have a close relationship, there’s always moments where everyone’s like, ‘Hey, we need to move on, this is your last take’ and the director’s like ‘okay’, and then you can kind of see them like go inside themselves. And I think that it’s a DP’s job really to kind of be the person that’s like ‘Stop for two seconds. Are you happy? Are you not happy?’ And sometimes it’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m happy. I was just thinking about the next scene.’ And that’s cool. And sometimes it’s like something’s telling them that they didn’t get the exact thing. And I think you’re really lucky if you have those moments because as a DP I will have them all the time after the fact like, ‘Oh, why didn’t I do this’. But I think that staying in tune is so important. And in the car scene, we definitely had that moment.

Short Hand: Finally, Anna and Jimmy offer their advice for filmmakers embarking on their short films.

Anna MacDonald: Short films are a crazy beast. And when I first started doing them, I was like, just be really open. Don’t close off your opportunities. You know, you might be like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if this film is stylistically a film I like to watch’. But I was very open. And I think that was really good for me. But then I think, in being open, you also need to recognise how you kind of see yourself in a film. The way I look at stuff now is, if I get sent a script, and I don’t feel like a little flame, then I’m learning to sort of trust that intuition. And it doesn’t necessarily mean like, it’s not a good film, or whatever. Or it might be an AMAZING film. But I’m like, I don’t see how I can approach it in my own way. There’s someone else better to shoot this. Now when I read a script I look for that flame or that connection. But like, sort of on that note, as well, people write to me about shorts, they often send me a script and a treatment. And for me, I would just say like, always read the script first. I will not open that treatment until I’ve read the script a couple of times, at least. And I also don’t look up the director, like look at their other films yet. Like I just look at the script itself, and then have some thoughts.

And then once you have an image in your head or have seen the film, and that’s another thing, like, if I haven’t been able to watch the film in my head, that usually means like, I can’t see myself shooting it. Then I’ll kind of tackle the visuals. And then if there’s something interesting, I’m like, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t think of that. But that seems really cool’, then I’ll go in for a meeting. But I think that’s something that kind of took me a while to learn if that makes any sense at all? I would say even if it’s a script that scares me for whatever reason, or it feels like a huge challenge, that’s something to always at least go for the interview for and like chat to the director. And I also think in that meeting with the director, there’s a few things like it’s hard to describe, but I think that there needs to be a certain vibe. Sometimes it may be an amazing script and the filmmaker’s done loads of like incredible work, but you kind of feel like there’s a distance and I feel like they’re kind of not as open as I maybe need to feel comfortable then it’s like recognising that as well. For instance, if I had a thought on the script and I asked a bunch of questions and they don’t want to engage, then for me, that’s like, ‘Okay, I’m not probably the best suited for you. Because that’s not how I work.’

Jimmy Dean: There’s a couple of things that I would suggest to people making their first publicly-funded short, the first of which is I do think your focus should be on the actors and the story. And I think if you put the time into building a team that you trust and love, then they’ll allow you to do your best job. I genuinely think that’s so important.

And just based off that, I know when I used to listen to like podcasts like this, or just any filmmaker, a lot of the time they sound like they have it so together, or they present themselves as if they know everything. And I would just say like, again, if you have a team you trust, then it allows you to ask and don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions. On my first collaboration with Anna, I got really confused about lenses and shot sizes. And I remember just having to be like, ‘I’m really sorry, can you just tell me what what you’re on about? Like cinematography for dummies, help me learn’ and I think a lot of people  overcompensate for not knowing, and they try to come up with all the right answers. But if you’ve got your team, you can open up to them and they can help you through it. And I think just to follow on from that, especially because shorts only have the potential to change the career trajectory of like a very few people. So I think just bear in mind to be so thankful for everyone who helped you out on it, and so thankful for their collaboration. Everyone on set is essentially there for you and helping you realise something and I think it’s just one of the most valuable things you can do is make them feel valuable and part of it because I guarantee it will make your film better and everyone will have more fun working on it.

Short Hand: Thank you for listening to Short Hand. Look out for a new episode next week that will focus on directing actors and how to elicit brilliant performances from them. Thank you to our guests this week: Evelin van Rei, Olan Collardy, Anna MacDonald and Jimmy Dean.