Shlof Gezunterheyt (2025) - Director of Photography and Editor.
Shlof Gezunterheyt is a Short Film I worked as a DP and Editor on. The script was extremely humble and there wasn’t much visual direction on the page. I decided to shoot and light it as realistically as possible using motivated lighting with a touch of contrast for beautiful shadows. For equipment, I shot on my A7S3 and recorded to Prores Raw using an Atomos Ninja 5+. I used Vintage Contax Zeiss lenses with a Black pro mist 1/8 for the early period scenes and then Sirui Vision primes for the later periods scenes to give the time jump a different feel. My main lighting kit was an Amaran 100d, Amaran Cob 60d, Godox SL60, an RGB tube light, Amaran MC and some tungsten balanced LED hanging lights in lanterns (China Balls). I also brought an Android tablet to connect through my DJI Hawkeye attachment to give the director a wireless monitor. I thought multiple devices could connect to but it only supports one.
DAY 1
Day 1 was hard. Two days before we shot we lost our original location and had to scramble. The team did find another suitable location, it was a lot smaller and I had to rework the entire storyboard to a space I hadn’t seen yet. On top of this, I had an early morning flight to Brisbane the next day and it was a camera logistics nightmare on my end. We started the day in the back of the tailors and got some close up shots of Shylie (Dvoira), before moving into the main room and focusing on shots of Raffael (Young Jacob). For the opening push in, I used a 1.5m Camera slider which I put on-top of some sandbags on the floor and just manually pushed and tilted up for the take. Those first maybe 5 shots we’re super difficult while the team found their feet, but after that we pushed through and were firing through it super fast. I also brought my 90mm Macro to get the opening shot of the film, where I was lying down on the floor while Raffael played with a small wooden Elephant. We had Sewing Machine Issues, Space issues, it was raining, the alarm kept going off, A big day. Then I went home, dumped all the footage and left for the airport in the morning.
DAY 2
Day 2 was a lot better. We were (very kindly) set up in the house of Harrison (1st AD) and had two scenes to get through. While setting up for our initial scene, one of the actors refused to show up. Despite multiple phone calls going on we couldn’t get a hold of them, so Brok (Producer) stepped in and became a body double, but we couldn’t show his face. I suspended a lantern above the table in this scene, then I had an Amaran MC attached to that beaming a more accurate face light onto the actors, then the 100d with a large diffusion sheet filled the rest of the room with an ambient soft light.
The second scene was arguably the most critical scene in the film. We had some location issues which resulted in us having to rotate the bed and switch up the camera angles on the day which was not great to add onto the stress of getting this scene shot correctly. I mentioned the script wasn’t extremely visual before, and it’s because the emotional beats are kind of suspended in subtlety. You can’t brute force these scenes, you have to sit with it and really point the camera as an observer. At no point in this film should the camera be noticeable, and that is a really difficult thing to do well when you’re dealing with small independent production. The team was great, they listened to me when I needed to switch things up and we’re extremely patient while I set my lights up. For the bedroom, I had the 100d with it’s big diffusion and a half tungsten aimed to mimic the directional light of a motivated lamp that was in the shot, then I had an RBG panel set to daylight that was super dim in the scene just to fill the dark areas of the scene with a nice blue, and the Amaran MC was used as the light inside the lampshade.
The final setup was simple enough, tungsten lantern hanging high in a hallway with the RGB panel light still filling the now dark room.
DAY 3
Day 3 went about as perfect as a shoot day can go. Good vibes, super on track of time and an eager/focused team. This was my first shoot with my brand new Vision Prime lenses and they’re so great. I had never used the Contax Zeiss lenses on a shoot where multiple people needed to crowd the camera, and their size and construction just did not work for an assistant camera to do their job efficiently. I was originally going to shoot this day on them and light it differently, but I purchased the vision primes to get over those set issues and they are just stellar.
Our first setup was in another bedroom. Making this look cosy but more modern than the previous room was super important. I used a lantern suspended high in the room to mimic ceiling lights. Then because we were in a new build, we hung curtains off of a C-stand and lined them up to appear as though they were installed. We had a camera slide, tripod setups and a quick handheld shot towards the end and they all went smoothly.
The second setup was a shot that Mike (Director) had been talking about since he first showed me the script. Dark hallway with Seth (Adult Jacob) sitting at the end of it, light spilling out of Alice’s bedroom, and a camera push towards him. I put an RGB Tungsten in the bathroom and faked that as the bedroom light that was spilling into the hallway, then set up the 100d to fill the dining area, and put an Amaran MC magnetised to a kitchen awning to spotlight Seth at the end of the shot. Then I set up the camera slider over the toilet and essentially straddled the thing in order to push it. There was one more shot in this hallway which matches the hallway shot on day two, so we set up the lantern again and matched it’s position/direction to one of our previous shots.
The last setup was in the dining area/kitchen and I could really play with depth in this shot. RGB panel in the hallway, 100d filling the dining are and then the 60d spotlighting our main actor in the scene. It looks fantastic. Then for a romantic shot, I suspended an RGB tube light above Seth and Jess (Charlotte) in the shot to give them a harsh edge against our dark hallway.
PICKUPS
We only needed two pickups. The first was a macro shot of the sewing machine and then a shot of the clock at Dvoira’s workplace. I shot both of these at my house. We went through 4 sewing machines, none of them worked and in the shot that is in the film, it’s still not working correctly. The machine that made it into the film is my dad’s and is really old. It kept jamming when we ran thread through it, so after about 2.5 hours trying to fix the thing, I just tied the thread to the needle head and ran the machine super fast.
POST-PRODUCTION
Post-Production was really rapid. The rough cut was finished in maybe 4 days it was super quick to come together. Then I sat with the Director and we smashed straight through to the final cut. From there we handed it over to our musical composer who made a wonderful soundtrack for the film as I powered through VFX. There were a tonne of signs and period inaccuracies that I had to go in and remove from the film. Lastly was a colour grade and my Younger brother did some sound design to tie the film together. Now it’s in the festival run stage, last I heard we had been officially selected in three international festivals which is an amazing achievement for the team.
CREW LIST
Producer - Brok Power
Executive Producer - Alex Stafford
Cinematographer - Marcus Machen
Composer - Griffin Jennings
Art Director - Ellie McCandless
Editor - Marcus Machen
Young Jacob - Raffael Gruner
Darlene - Daisy Valerio
Dvoira - Shylie Arzouan
Levi - Brok Power
Adult Jacob - Seth Kannof
Charlotte - Jess Zuker
Alice - Charlie Chester
1st Assistant Director - Harrison Tribe
2nd Assistant Director - Ty Ellison
Production Sound - Martin Harris
Gaffer - Jason Tuck
Sound Mixer - Lewis Machen
Hair and Makeup - Cleoni Nel
Hair and Makeup - Armanda Pozzetto
Camera Assistant - Nikhil Perera
Camera Assistant - Finn Arlington
Production Assistant - Darren Le
Production Assistant - Anuraag Satheesh
