As you have seen in the pitch, Pavina was interested in going to the advertising route for her final film project. As we have worked together before, I thought it was a great idea to help her out with her vision and further her experience with cinematography. As for me, I thought it would interesting to dabble with commercial shooting – it was a very easy shoot and was all done in a day. It was also a simple plot with the main focus on the shoes and so, very little acting was required for the actor and actress.

The only real challenge was maintaining our stamina as we had to shoot across different locations. By the third location, we were all starting to get tired – we started filming at one in the afternoon and finished filming by eight in the evening.

In this blog post, I am going to talk about the technicalities of the whole shoot and how we filmed. The camera that we used was the Nikon D3200 and the Canon 80D alongside with a gimbal/stabiliser, the GlideCam 2000. There were a lot of difficulties that came along with using the camera and a stabiliser, mainly because it was my first time using the gimbal, Canon D and the Nikon D3200 with a 24-70mm lens, f2.8 (which mind you, was a massive lens). Whilst filming, it was all a learning process for me and Pavina in terms of how to use these types of equipment. It took us a few tries to get the perfect shot but overall, it was a quick process for us to learn the tricks of the gimbal and the camera.

The gimbal did not produce the smoothest of shots, however, it was less shaky had it been just me operating the camera by itself. The shakiness can easily be fixed in post-production through ‘Warp Stabiliser’. As for the camera and the lens, it wasn’t as beautiful as the Sony a6000 which is why I opted to use a different lens to the kit lens (f.35 vs f2.8). Because it had a lower aperture, it produced a brighter exposure of the shot. However Nikon in general just has a different look from Sony – the colours in the shot are less accurate to real life, whilst Sony amplifies the colour and makes it more beautiful. Nikon makes the shot look quite dull and has a yellow tinge to it. This is not a major problem though, and can easily be fixed in post-production.

For the night time shooting, Pavina utilised external lighting on a low budget and brought her own lamp to the shoot and used a red, see-through film over it to produce a red tinge. It was a practical and effective way to get rid of the shadows but I’m not sure if it actually executed the shot that we wanted. Nonetheless, it was still a great attempt to add in effects and stylise the whole shot.

There are roots of inspiration from our previous short film, Missed Moments, which was originally inspired by In the Mood for Love, an impressionist type of film. Despite being a commercial shoot, Pavina and I aim to have a Hong Kong New Wave style with a commercial twist to it.