A different type of camera

Roughly 18 months ago I received an exciting letter in the post. It told me that in a few weeks time some Hollywood film makers were coming to town and using my street (yes, MY STREET!!) to film part of their new movie. The filming was taking place maybe 100 metres from my front door, so needless to say I decided to head on down and see how these Hollywood big boys do it (and also with Casino Royale Bond girl Eva Green starring I thought I might chance my arm with her if the opportunity arose).

From Filming on My Street

The movie being made went by the name of Franklyn, some sort of sci-fi drama set in a futuristic London with explosions and stuff in it. From a photographic standpoint the importance placed on lighting was quite extraordinary. Like still photography it's all about quality, not quantity, and from the next couple of shots you'll see that every light used was either bounced or put through some pretty high strength diffusers which cause a nice soft light - direct light causes more contrast in the image / scene and often results in ugly harsh shadows.





Without doubt the most impressive bit of kit had nothing to with photography though, it was an incredible rain making machine. It was a basically a 15m pipe held up by a crane and attached to a high power hose, the pipe had a series of sprinkler devices right down the length of it, and when the juice was turned on the result was a monsoon.







Now I know what you're thinking - this is all well and good Simon but you're really clutching at straws talking about photos taken 18 months ago, why now? I'll tell you why, because a few weeks ago I was walking through the Underground when I saw a poster for the movie on a wall announcing its cinema release! Hooray! Post production was a little longer than I'd anticipated but that's fine, the day had finally arrived I could go to my local cinema and see my own freakin' street on the silver screen!

Well, at least that's what I thought.

I had planned to see it this Sunday but when I looked where it was showing there was ONE CINEMA IN THE WHOLE OF LONDON I could see it at! 2 weeks after release! For a film set in London with several moderately big name stars (Ryan Philipe is the other one)! What's going on? The cost of 5 minutes screen time in Tabernacle St must have been astronomical, there were 3 cranes (2 for lighting, 1 for the rain machine), the rain machine itself, a crew of close to 50, countless lights and other movie related stuff, catering for the cast and crew, the time and cost of writing to all the local residents giving them the heads up, money paid to The Tabernacle pub where filming took place, replacing the window where the explosion scene took place (I wasn't there for this but it sounded awesome) and paying off the council to block off the road for 2 weeks. And all for a movie that hardly saw the light of day in London cinemas.

I'm interested to hear if anyone out there in the rest of the world has heard of this movie? Let me know in the comments.

In other news I'm going on a shoot Monday night so I'll get something new up here soon rather than resorting to using old stuff.