Five minutes with Paul Hamilton

I interviewed Paul Hamilton who is an former member of the IRA. He talked about his experiences and how he is helping former prisoners today cope with the effects of the troubles. The camera was positioned over my shoulder so the audience would get a sense I was there asking the questions but that my interviewee was the centre of attention, this was shot with one camera on a Cannon 550D, with limited equipment available this was the best outcome I achieved as I had originally planned a two camera shoot.

The Red Balloon

I admire this film very highly not only as a cinematographer but also as a story teller. Throughout the film I notice that Paris is the main character the director is showing Paris of in a good light, most of the scenes in Paris are shown in grey and I think this is to show the red balloon more so it will standout. I think the cinematographer Edmond Séchan has shown this through his camera work. One of the other things I love that Edmond Séchan did is the use of Cinéma vérité and where you get reactions from normal people you also get movements that an actor cannot get naturally.

Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski

Dariusz Wolski  is a cinematographer that I admire. I admire his work in Prometheus and how he transports the audience to a whole new world. Dariusz Wolski uses strange camera angles at the beginning of the film I feel he uses these angles to show that this world makes no sense. On every twist and turn the story takes Wolski takes you on their journey. 

Harold Pinter's Last To Go

This production was shot live to tape, the actors I worked with were Nick Hardin who acted in Lockout and Patch Connolly who also acted in the Oscar winning short The Shore. My role in this production was head of sound, in this role I allocated two sound assistants on two sennheiser shot gun microphones that were on a boom pole their role was to move the microphone with the actors so they caught the dialogue, I put up an annotated script on the back of the set so the assistants knew when the actors were moving.

This production also required the use of a backing track which had the atmosphere of the bar setting. This gave the illousion of people in a bar but were not seen, horse racing on a radio which was also heard but not seen. As well as driecting the sound assistants I also had to monitor the levels of the dialouge and the atmosphere track so they didnt peak.

Cigarette's We Smoked Together (Internal)

This part of this production was shot internally using the directors bathroom in a town called Milisle. This was shot using a Cannon 550 DSLR using zoom microphone with a Sennheiser microphone attached by a XLR cable. Problems that occurred during this shoot which I had to over come were the house phone were I had to pull out the main connection in the wall, the bathroom was next to the kitchen and there was a bathroom above the problems.

There was an excess of reflected sounds, this give amplification to the performer's voices when it was required. The windjammer reduced unwanted high frequencies sounds. In addition there were other intrusions such footsteps and beeping cooker. Working with the 1st AD we managed to record with with minimum of disruption. 

Cigarette's We Smoked Together (External)

This part of the production was filmed on location in an underground subway in Belfast city centre. I was recording dialogue in a city environment with a Zoom H1 digital recorder, filmed on a Cannon 550 DSLR.  I faced many problems when filming externally for example traffic on the road above, air planes flying past, people walking and echos in the underground subway.

I recorded these environmental sounds so that they can be used later in the sound edit.

Sound man

What is a picture without sound? What would a film be without it? I created a bar out of wood panels and through the sound I made this bar come to life. I fight for equal sound status. Sound can alter perception of time, adds unseen objects to the image and gives depth beyond what mere pictures can show. I aim to create sound tracks such as predator that creates a whole world, for example in predator the sound and music are the main thing showing the predators personality without seeing it on screen, this gives the audience the atmosphere and the intense feeling of it's presence. I had a small crew where I allocated a boom microphone so no wires were shown. On this production I was constantly checking the levels of the microphones this was important so the sound didn’t go of the scale. Atmosphere is key for bringing a set to life.