Page 18 - Fujifilm Exposure_35 Miss Potter_ok

Once upon a day in Bracknell Forest as the Shammasian brothers create a sense of the supernatural for Ntheir short film, The Carriageway
ot content to sit around themselves to getting a striking image and wait for their feature while embracing the supernatural ele- script, The Unspoken, to ments of the narrative.
attract offers, filmmaking “The thing is because we weren’t brothers Ludwig and Paul lighting the forest,” Ludwig explains, Shammasian hit upon a “Ciro wanted to pick a spot where the novel way to drum up light was interesting. That was kind of
interest. Deciding to make a short film strange because you don’t have too which encapsulated some of the much control, but he chose a path
themes and ideas that were inherent in the feature, they shot The Carriageway in Bracknell Forest over one day this summer.
“The idea was that the short would give an idea of the visual approach we might take,” explains Ludwig, co-writer, co-director and pro- ducer on the film, “and also how we control actors, how we control a scene, our taste in music, our sentiments.”
“I think it has the overall feel of the feature,” adds Paul, the younger brother by three years, “as much because it is very dialogue-based. At first, a lot of agencies really liked the feature script but they weren’t pre- pared to take that extra step because they thought maybe it was too dia- logue-based, and wondered how it would work.
“We thought that instead of just talk- ing about how we would do it we would show them how it would be done.”
With three actors and key crew, including Italian-born DP Ciro Candia, the Shammasian Brothers set about bringing their short film to life. It fea- tures an old man (David Gant) telling a reporter (Kate McGoldrick) of the supernatural encounter his own father (Noah Huntley) experienced with his late wife on that very forest path 50 years before.
“The film is basically about how the paranormal can sometimes be used to cope with grief,” Ludwig con- tinues, “and it really needed to have that cinematic impact. We had one day there and, even ungraded, it looks incredible. Everyone comments about how beautiful it looks, which we’re so happy about.”
Shot primarily on steadicam by operator Mike Scott using the 35mm Eterna 250D 8563, the crew dedicated
specifically where the trees broke up the sunlight. He knew that we were going to track back, with the result that as the characters move, they go in and out of the light quite regularly. We noticed that the stock handled that really well, it goes from bright to dark and it just looks great.”
Both directors are quick to praise the enthusiasm, craft and keen eye of their cinematographer, who has to date amassed various camera crew credits on major films such as Gladiator, Spy Game, Kingdom Of Heaven and Separate Lies.
“It was tricky for him,” Ludwig recalls, “because we only had one day, and by the end of it we were running out of time. We reached the point where some of the crew felt we need- ed to pack up and go home because there was simply no light. Even Paul and I thought that was it, with three or four more scenes to do. Ciro just said to carry on, that it would work.
“So we did, and even though we had no reading on the meter, those shots look the best in the film. It picked up exactly what we wanted. One of the last shots that we did, where the sun had almost disappeared and was just dipping down, it just spilled enough light into the corner of the frame to make it look great.
“That turned out to be one of the nicest shots, so we were happy in the fact the latitude was there. We didn’t need to go back, all the detail was there.”
Having entered the industry rela- tively recently, each armed with a degree in film theory from London Metropolitan University, Ludwig and Paul Shammasian have wasted no time in getting noticed.
In 2005 their commercial for Bang & Olufsen, Learn To Listen, won
the Young Director Award at Cannes, while in the same year they received a prize from Promo magazine for their work directing the pop promo for Scottish band Biffy Clyro’s Glitter & Trauma. The future seems to hold more of the former and less of the latter for two enterprising new film- makers. ■ ANWAR BRETT
The Carriageway was originated on 35mm Eterna 250D 8563
16 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture