La Pasión started as a small, single afternoon movie Roeland and I planned to make for school. We quickly realised it could be something bigger, so we reworked the scenario and filmed the next sunday, and then the next sunday and then another and another sunday. It took quite a long time because most of the time we had to wake the actors first (Hi, Jeremy and Elliot) and clean the guest/party room next. But most of the time was spend setting up shots. It’s amazing how much longer it takes when using a tripod and all manual camera settings compared to hand held shooting with a camera in full auto mode.
The reason most of my previous stuff is handheld (see for instance Degoutant) is because our teacher tells us to do so. In fact, when I showed him my tripod during one of the first lessons two years ago, he told me I wouldn’t be needing that for quite some time. It might seem contra-intuitive when every bulletin board on the web tells you to use a tripod if you want “professional looking” movies, but the truth of the matter is that it’s a lot easier and faster to use a handheld camera if you want to learn about composition, camera moves, shot continuity and rhythm. The end result might not be as good looking but you do learn how to tell a story visually. I hope you see the progress I made if you look at my first movie and this one.
By the way, there are still some handheld shots in the movie. See if you can spot them. And another by the way, this is the first movie shown here shot with my new Sony FX1. I’m quite happy with it. I feel like it will take some years untill I will have exhausted the possibilities of this camera. Next on the list is sound and light design and working with a larger crew. We deliberately chose against using lights in this movie since there were only two of us: me as the director, and Roeland as the camera operator.
Anyway, here it is.