Over the past 3 years of studying at the University of Greenwich, my filmmaking knowledge has greatly expanded and in turn my practical work has also progressed. This is clear to see if you look back over my work from the past 3 years, although, during the first year I do not believe I improved greatly and it was until the second year that I really found my feet.
My work during the first year was good for that time, my lighting and composition skills were not amazing but I had a certain level of narrative storytelling, I understood what was needed to have a story and my work on Impulse (Marigold. A, 2018) proves that. The story wasn’t groundbreaking but after adapting a monologue into a story about two people it worked well and was… good?
Moving into second year, my lighting was in the same place but my composition was much better, Arcade Boy (Gibbons. F, 2018) had more dynamic shots and great coverage for most of the scenes. I have to thank the writer for writing such a great piece that made directing the film much easier and the actors gave a performance that I wanted. For a second year university film I say it was quite successful and I had a lot of fun shooting and editing it. I understood framing much better and had a lot more to choose from in the edit especially during the main conversational scene, there were a variety of angles and a lot of reaction shots to use to keep the audience interested. Despite directing the film I always had my cinematographer head on and always kept an eye on everything to do with the camera, so, moving into the second term I wanted to work on my cinematography skills.
For Pretenders (Perkins. T & Dobson. S, 2019), I worked solely as the Director of Photography meaning I could put all my focus into all things camera and lighting. As you can see from the screen grabs above & below, my cinematography has improved massively and I enjoyed having more fun with my composition. I also used a lot of natural lighting for all the scenes due to the high windows from the location in the University grounds, very similar to the works of Robbie Ryan in The Favourite (Lanthimos. Y, 2018), something I discovered while researching the film before shooting. Despite the differences in genre and era the locations were very similar so drew a lot of influence, mostly from the video ‘THE FAVOURITE | Cinematography | Fox Searchlight’ (Searchlight Pictures, 2019). I’m pleased with my work but think my lighting could improve, I used the natural light well but needed to add to it, either with bounce boards or extra lights to avoid the digital grain created in some images.
Coming into my final year, the one thing I wanted to improve on was my lighting, during the cinematography workshops we have worked a lot on lighting but also on camera movement. I am most proud of the dolly zoom achieved in one lesson, it took 5 of us with 2 grips and 3 of us working on the camera but we managed to make it work.
Moving into the final project, the teaser we created had much better lighting. I really enjoyed planning out the lighting and working with a smoke machine to create a haze and in turn the light beams in the scene; I wanted a very contrasting image and I think I achieved that. I have been working extremely hard on my lighting, researching different styles of lighting and techniques used to apply for my final film usually through the Aputure YouTube page and their weekly tips videos.
Over the past 3 years I have learnt a lot, with the main growth coming over the final year due to the specialised workshops which have allowed me to hone my skills in the cinematography department. I am excited to see how my final project looks and how much I will improve over the next few years.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Searchlight Pictures (2019). THE FAVOURITE | Cinematography | FOX Searchlight. [image] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVTr1_RdPz0
- The Favourite. (2018). [film] Directed by Y. Lanthimos. United Kingdom: Fox Searchlight.
- Impulse. (2018). [short film] Directed by A. Marigold. United Kingdom: Independent
- Arcade Boy. (2018). [short film] Directed by F. Gibbons. United Kingdom: Independent
- Pretenders. (2019). [short film. Directed by T. Perkins & S. Dobson. United Kingdom. Independent
- With You In Mind. (2019). [teaser trailer]. Directed by I. Doyle. United Kingdom. Independent
IMAGES
- Figure 1 – Felix Gibbons (2018). Arcade Boy – Short Sequence
- Figure 2,3,4 – Pretenders. (2019). [short film. Directed by T. Perkins & S. Dobson. United Kingdom. Independent
- Figure 5 – Felix Gibbons (2020). Dolly Zoom. [image] Available at: https://youtu.be/tz5zRVk1itg
- Figure 6 – With You In Mind. (2019). [teaser trailer]. Directed by I. Doyle. United Kingdom. Independent. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyX0GMT6NA0
Felix Gibbons Portfolio 