DPReview TV: Behind the scenes – telling a better story through cinematography

I could never do well with cinematography. It's too difficult to photoshop. :)

Beautiful cinematography, those oniric ocean shots are beautiful. Kudos to Jordan.

However...

The director describes the story like this: "The protagonist struggles to navigate his way through a world where indifference is abundant and empathy is scarce..."

but he shows exactly the opposite.

First, a girl gives him a thank you card...
her mom is very nice to him when apparently he barely knows her...
his wife has a nice phone conversation even when he woked her up the middle of the night.

I don't see the struggle.

And I don't see why the old man's death is relevant to the story.

I love the images, and the stillness.
Feels great. That's exactly what all this technique is for: nice images and emotion.

This is a gentle, thoughtful, slow (European Style - reminded me of the Wild Pear Tree, which I saw last week) beautifully felt movie. Well done. I loved the contstant tension of feeling that the foreign guy on the front desk may be treated with suspicion over the guest's death. His humanity, gentle steadyness and sensitivity presented a character to admire and the reciprocal connection of his son on the other side of the world sensing that something disturbing was happening added poignancy to the distance. I loved the way that the red head guest was shot talking about her excess belongings while her head was tipped against the door frame. Gorgeous. The seascapes with the voiceover were so good, the father's gently probing questions over the phone and the mother's generous sensitive replies. Such a pleasure. You guys did good, real good.

I like the overall tone but there's several things that are missing for me. One, there's no tie-in between the woman with kids and the dead guest. Just watching the EMTs roll the body past them for some kind of reaction would have integrated them in the story. Even for a short movie I feel like it fails to circle around the main story line.

The second is that if you arrived at a motel with a car's worth of stuff, how would you lose the space to take it with you? Without any kind of lead-in, that seems awfully construed to bring the protagonist's family into it.

Third is the whole family thing, why is he working in a US motel calling home to his family in Europe? You managed to give a weak lead that he's got a son, but yet failed to say a few more words so it made sense.

Unless it's just too deep for me and the guy who dies alone in a motel means absolutely nothing at all. Which I suppose could be the intent, but then it's hidden too deep for my liking. I just don't get the message.

Your discussion was 6 seconds too short to bet out the length of the film.
Not sure how I feel about it. The tone and message where good. But the acting, staging and dialogue was not great.

A world of its own that creates a world of its own ........🍅

I love it. It takes courage to make a 'simple' film - nowhere to hide. It also requires a bit of courage from the audience to admit that, yeah, that's my life there on the screen as well.

P.S.: I have a feeling I have seen one of the up and coming actresses somewhere on this website before!!! Are you guys really THAT inseparable??? True love!
P.P.S. I also enjoyed your little pluck for character in a lens, and how to add it back in - if you have to with some glycerin. I have started liking my crappiest lenses the most.

I like the cinematography not just because of Dpreview's friends LoL The light, the pictures in the moving ... I watched it on 4K TV/Monitor and it excels! Thumbs up !!
Unfortunately I can't seem to follow through the movie it (story aka script) is just plain and pale to me.
I guess indeed it is a short film but I thought an extra short scene with the dead man before his death could only add more value to the story, especially if we let him have some interactions with lady's young kids, this could broader the "contrast" and so on. The lady's last "thank you" was a bit redundant and I believe it is better she just did the final "look" at the guy.

Overall, I wish the best of luck of this film!

Excellent! Fascinating to hear some of the thought processes going on behind the camera. The movie was very good too, especially the Denmark footage.

It's wonderful that affordable cameras like the GH5S and powerful editing software programs are available to aspiring filmmakers today.

The link to watch the film won't work for me :(

Very cool, Jordan. Good luck with the film.

Looks OK, bit heavy on the camera moves and not enough on the story so couldn't get into it.

Don't worry about the camera moves so much, it won't make or break the project.

Watched the movie, didn’t watch the behind the scenes. Enjoyed it, good short. Would perhaps say it was a bit over graded or a bit heavy on the contrast, a bit more like stills than movies, and I suspect it was shot on the east coast and not in any Slavic speaking country, judging by dunes and foliage

One thing I noticed is that in big budget movies, there is always some slight camera shake, even in scenes where there is otherwise no camera movement. I almost never see scenes where the camera is completely static.

I wonder what the reasons are for cinematographers to go this way.

It certainly does feel more "cinematic" to me, but that might just be because I have been getting used to every film maker doing it this way.

I'd be really interested in hearing some rationales for this!

in high school ? you guys go back

did you collaborate on some macaroni pictures in kindergarten ?

the film looks to be good.. saw the trailer so far .....and its easy to forget the stuff you have to consider on every shot ... i look foward to watching it