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MIND GAMES IN OZ
DP Nick Matthews reports
from Down Under on how he borrowed from the best for his first feature Modern Love
After completing an honours degree in film at Flinders University in South Australia, where I specialised in cine- matography, I decided to
try my luck in London. I had emigrated to Australia from the UK as a baby so I was lucky that I had a
“European passport.
After some grim times as a data entry clerk amongst other things, I
fact that I was having an ongoing email discussion with an old University class mate of mine, Alex Frayne.
We’d collaborated on a couple of shorts before I left for Europe and Alex was proposing that we make a low-budget feature together. He didn’t have a script locked off but he had something he was developing.
We started working together on a thriller script about a family who return to a coastal town to claim a ramshackle house that they’ve inherit- ed after the death of the man’s uncle. We worked on the script together for six months before we had something that we thought was worth shooting.
Alex began raising some funds from private investors with a pitch that we were going to make a psycho- logical thriller called Modern Love, that would utilise South Australia’s rugged coastal topography.
In November 2003 we hired an Arri SR3 and Alex Frayne (director), Tom Huezenroder (sound designer) and I (cinematographer) headed off on a road trip to shoot some stock tests that if successful would be some 2nd unit footage for our film.
On the trip we started talking about films that we liked the look of. Our standard reference movies were The Pledge, Blood Simple and, of course, for the interiors, Seven.
I tested a variety of stocks. At this time, Alex and I became interested in the idea of doing a bleach bypass. I ended up settling on Fuji F-250T and bleach bypassing the negative with Cinevex in Melbourne as South Australia doesn’t have a suitable lab.
I tested Tiffen’s low con filters to try and counter-act some of the con- trast that the BB process was giving me. The look that we settled on was one of muted primaries and dense blacks. I liked the F-250T because it struck me that it was sharper and cleaner than the other stocks I tested.
It also felt like under tungsten it was slightly cooler than the rival. As well as the low con filter, under day- light, an 81EF was standard. Shooting the tungsten balanced F-250T with an 81EF meant that we were only half way balancing the blend of natural
light and HMI. That is, the look is a slightly cool impression of daylight. In the script, much of the drama
takes place in the grim shack that the family has just inherited.
Alex grew up in the area around Strathalbyn, an hour north of Adelaide. He’d sourced an abandoned farm house from a local farmer. It was being used to store hay. After a few days of removing tons of hay, the house was ready for production designer Robert Webb to begin weav- ing his magic.
In reality, the house was not on the coast but with the addition of a some wonderfully rustic ‘beachy’ items sourced from the local antique shops, the shack was ready. Robert did a wonderful job. When I entered the house I was instantly reminded of the ‘gluttony’ murder scene in Seven - but with a maritime feel!
In March 2004 we started shooting. Modern Love begins as John (Mark Constable), Emily (Victoria Hill), and their young son Edward (William Traeger) leave the city for what they believe to be a brief foray into the country to claim John’s inheritance.
As with all good psychological thrillers, nothing is quite what it seems, and John’s increasingly bizarre, inexplicable behaviour begins to tear the family apart.
I’d read a bit about how Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River was lit and in terms of lighting, that film became our main reference.
Gaffer Storm Ashwood and I devel- oped a look based on beaming in 2.5K HMIs into the windows of the shack and using shiny reflectors of varied sizes to add splashes of detail to the actors and the set.
One item that would also become indispensable was what we called ‘the wand’, a 15 inch little kino flow that would often be the only light on set. At times we textured the light with smoke.
This proved a nightmare because all the holes in the old house meant it was drafty and the smoke would move! We were often shooting into very hot windows and it took a week to convince our brilliant focus puller (one-woman camera department),
got a job as an international repre- sentative for Arri lighting. It was a great job. I flew all around the world, taking people out to dinner on an expense account, and earning more money than I’d ever earned before - or have since (much to the conster- nation of my mum)
Sadly, it wasn’t for me, though. I was missing shooting, so I left Arri and began trying to shop myself around as a camera assistant.
My biggest break in the UK came when I secured a prestigious job on the HBO mini-series, Band Of Brothers, as video assistant!
In essence, that meant I was run- ning out cables in knee-high deep mud between the video assist and the numerous cameras (and then cleaning the cables at the end of the day).
As it turned out, it was an amazing experience. I got to watch DP Remi Adefarasin BSC work. I was in awe of his understated persona on set and his amazing ability to light using so few lights.
After a few episodes of BoB, I graduated to Video Operator and I got to have an assistant who cleaned the cables which meant I had more time at video village talking to the actors and directors.
I once recall sitting next to Tom Hanks and all I could think was that I wanted to tell him that I loved him in films like Splash and Big, but that I didn’t really like Forrest Gump. I’m glad I didn’t.
At the end of BoB, I stole Hanks’ metal Starbucks coffee cup that used to live by the monitors. I just needed to get that off my chest!
After spending four years out of Australia, I decided it was time to return home to Adelaide in South Australia. In part this was due to the
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