When you’re setting a film in a specific time & place it’s important to do as much research as you can. While the internet proves a valuable source of reference, nothing quite takes the place of going out into the field!
So with kind permission from the good people of Renaissance Antiques on Capel Street in Dublin, Stephen O’Connor set off armed with a camera to snap away at anything interesting that caught his eye. Here are just some of the snaps which he came back with:
Sorry there have been no ‘23 Degrees…’ posts for a while. Work commitments are crunching precious time once again, but work on the short film has been ongoing in spurts.
Here are some colour studies done by Stephen O’Connor. It’s amazing how colour can change the mood of a shot even though it’s the same object and angle.
Check out these studies of the Professor’s study:
The voices of your characters are hugely important, especially when you have to compress so much exposition into as little time as you have to tell the story! You want your audience to care about them and understand why other characters in the film would care about them too.
Myself & John Hurt Voice of Professor Orit
Getting the character design is always a tough part of any film. We’ve been through the mill on this short already and have done quite a few versions:
This was the first design of Professor Orit that we settled on, drawn up by Derek Horan:
(click on all the images to enlarge them)
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Was it just me or was Professor Orit looking a bit like this bloke?
One of the first things you need to think about when producing a short film is what aspect ratio you want your film to be in. We’re going to use ‘23 Degrees..’ as a way of testing our feature film pipeline for future projects so right from the beginning we have decided that we will be going to film.
This is an expensive process so in the past we have waited to see how successful the short is before we made the expensive decision to make a digital film print. However this is isn’t always the best option as there are certain choices you should make early on to increase the cinematic experience.
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There’s a scene in the script for 23 Degrees 5 Minutes that says:
A high angle looking down over College Green in Dublin. It is the turn of the century and the streets are full of men in top hats walking and horse drawn carriages.
Professor Orit (Voiceover)
If God ever spoke to us he would sing in Calculus
The camera moves down and towards the gates of the college.
The story of 23 Degrees 5 Minutes begins in Dublin around the turn of the last century (nothing specific), so we wanted to work on a look for the film that complimented that.
Art Director Stephen Robinson, did some research and came up with some amazing visual references.
I recently received word that I got funding through the Frameworks Scheme to direct a short film called 23 degrees 5 minutes.
I thought it might be nice to blog the progress of the film & show work in progress and the ups & downs ( & fun) of producing a short film.
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