Kodak Commercial

  I took part in a student competition entry for Kodak, which consisted of creating a 30 second commercial for Butlins, using 16mm film only. Luckily my University (MMU) backed out project, allowing us to hire equipment including an SR3 Rig and a set of Ziess Super speed lenses. I was lighting gaffer on the project, and there was some tricky lighting set-ups to pull off, especially as non of us had ever worked with 16mm film before.

  The project director was Steve Pilling, and his idea with the project was to project the feel of Butlins, but without showing Butlins itself. The idea was specific towards the themed weekends that they put on, being it 60's, 70's Disco, or 80's weekend, and the idea that these people who go on these holidays go back to their jobs with part of the holiday still with them. For example, a girl who has returned from the 70's weekend is working in a supermarket at the checkouts, with her disco shoe's still on.

  The image above was taken from the first scene that we filmed. It was shot in Chorlton in a store but as we could only manage to hire the space for an hour, early morning when it was dark outside, we had to emulate daylight spilling into the market. We did this by putting two HMI lights outside shining in, through diffusion frames to that the light spread, then had a kino as fill and used a pocket par as a backlight.

Working with 16mm was a really good experience and I learnt a lot on this shoot. It teaches disapline and organisation because you are limited on film reel and it costs so much money so therefore you are forced to