The Colours of Desire, a noir feature film was an ambitious challenge from the beginning. I had committed to film a feature film in Cleveland with Conrad Studios. Unfortunately, a few weeks before the start of pre-production funding fell through. Not the first time this has happened to an indie film!
However, The Director approached me with another concept he had been thinking about. He asked me if I would be interested in shooting The Colours of Desire in place of the project that had fell through. I agreed. I’ve never had the chance to shoot a noir film or a black and white feature film.
In 3 weeks he scripted, cast, raised the money and we started principal photography for The Colours of Desire. I was extremely excited after reading the script. It’s always great to read a script and visualize immediately how to shoot it. The story was simple in concept, the characters and their world were unique and interesting. Best of all, it had a lot of opportunity to create some gorgeous cinematography.
A still from The Colours of Desire
The Colours of Desire Research and Prep
In the meantime for my prep, I started researching some noir movies. I started with the classics such as Citizen Kane and Touch of evil as well as some of the inspirations from the Director such as“Dr. Strangelove” and “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”
The more research I did the more excited I got about the film. I was looking forward to creating my first noir feature film and the stylistic elements such as unique composition, deep focus, high contrast and of course the hard lighting and long shadows.
The Colours of Desire – Production
Having less than three weeks to prep was tight. However, I felt good going in to principal photography. I was ready for the challenges of working on an extremely low budget feature with minimal crew and equipment.
This was the first feature I shot on my new Red Weapon camera. I am extremely impressed with how it handled the noise. Some of the dark night exterior scenes, we had to go with minimal or even available lighting from the street lights. We would boost the camera to 2000 iso and the image still look very good with very natural, film like grain.
The Colours of Desire – BTS – Photo Credit: Erin Smith
Production had its challenging moments. We had some of the hottest days of the year. A couple of days there was 25 people that were crammed in a small apartment in 90 degree weather with no air conditioning.
The biggest challenge was having such a small crew and trying to light but still move quick since we only had the budget to film for twelve days. We also had a few days that we lost what little crew we had due to sickness. It is easy to laugh about it now but one night the crew was so small it consisted of only the director, cast and the sound mixer and myself. Thankfully everyone pitched in and went above and beyond to help out and we ended the day on time and captured some of the best footage on the whole shoot.
Needless to say, I am now an even bigger fan of Noir Film and Black & White Cinematography. I hope I have another chance to shoot this style of film again.
The Colours of Desire – Updates and Screening
If you are in the Cleveland area, The Colours of Desire will be having it first screening of the film on March 10th. Contact me for more details and ticket information.