Nick and I attended the short:seasons festival tonight, which included the world premiere of Lights. ARC cinema is the preeminent film venue in Australia – I had been taken in by a lot of ‘chat’ on the internet regarding the comparative quality of DSLR footage when blown up, but our footage looked amazing. I was also concerned with the quality of our audio – again, I found the cinema more forgiving than I had been led to believe.

Lights was really well received, and it was thrilling to hear a crowd laughing in its lighter moments. I’m still blown away by seeing a film of mine on “the big screen” (as my Mum calls it), in front of a near capacity audience.

There were a couple of discrepancies in the programme which I need to highlight – in particular, the programme stated “Nick Delatovic and Luke McGrath have been on the fringes of the film community for many years”. This is false – I haven’t even been back in Canberra that long, and I didn’t pick up a video camera until June of last year – that’s 11 months at most, not “many years”.

It downplays the achievements we have made – in less than a year, our debut short film has been funded by ScreenACT and screened at the National Film & Sound Archive, I have edited and live-scored a 1920s film that also separately played to a full house at the National Film & Sound Archive, completed a ten part webseries for the You Are Here festival, shot 15 videos (here and overseas) for a cooking show, and filmed 11 bands for 2XX’s Local’N’Live channel. All without any training or guidance – we’re learning quickly, and for it to be stated we’ve spent “many years” on the “fringes of the film community” is straight-up wrong.  They also credited Nick as the director – again, wrong and easily correctable.

Aside from those frustrations, it was a great evening. The other films were by and large fantastic – I’d have to single out The Book Of Memories for its amazing cinematography, and New Friend for its simple but clever storytelling.

Finally, a shout-out to Ben Drysdale’s impressive characterisation – the script called for Vic to do a “too-loud laugh”.  WIth only that to go on, Ben truly made it his own, and provided not only an audience highlight but an anchor for the character.

Lights will be screened at the National Film & Sound Archive today, as part of the ScreenACT short:seasons festival.

Originally I wanted to film Lights in a series of direct, static shots, in emulation of Ozu, who’s Tokyo Story I saw and loved recently.  Nothing clever, tricky or extraneous.  After five minutes on set, that already felt constricting, and I was back to framing shots through mirrors or from extreme angles.  What’s more, after my first cut, the producer (Nick) requested more shots establishing character and setting, to “open it up”.  He was right.

Mamet reckons all establishing shots are unnecessary and insulting to an audience, but that’s too harsh and restrictive.   Done right, they can be artistic and satisfying on their own.  Once something is established though, it’s insulting to establish it over and over.  Or just silly – Alias used to sub in the same exact shots of building exteriors in each episode.  Watching the show week to week, you might have brushed over it – watching several in a row on DVD, it becomes comical (do as Lou and I did, and turn it into a drinking game).

I wanted something different between scenes – fading to black felt like a wasted opportunity.  Fading to a colour was something that stuck with me from watching the right-up-my-alley Submarine (and I think I read that Ayodade took it from Rohmer).  I wanted to go one better than Submarine though, where the colours seem arbitrary, and to tie them to our theme.  Lights takes place over the months of autumn – as the scenes progress, the coloured fades change from a mustard yellow to maroon to corduroy brown, in concert with the leaves of the season.  It’s not a huge detail, but I like the thematic unity it gives.

I want to thank everyone involved – our actors Ben Drysdale, Cara Irvine and Julia Johnson, our walk-on cameo/scene dressing car provider/technical expert Ben Lane, sound recorder Paul Heslin, and production assistants Karell Duchesne and Louise McGrath.  Nick and I are gradually building up a steady, reliable crew, and it’s the most rewarding aspect of putting in as much time as we are.