THE DEVIL’S APPLE
2019
The Devil's Apple written by Tiana Luccacioni and co-directed by Ali Mango is a period piece feature film about love, lust, and revenge.
The cinematography was helmed by the very capable Gabriel Jung. Itching to create something beautiful, Gabriel has an affinity for film. Basically born in a studio, he spent much of his life learning the fine craft of film in photography and cinematography.
During pre-production, Gabriel had very strongly, and appropriately, fought for the idea of shooting this period piece on film. Everyone was for the idea, and the next task was to plan a way to budget this expense for the film. There was no shying away from it, it was an expense for sure but undoubtedly a needed one as the quality of the film and texture of the grain will be as alive and organic as this movie.
PRE-TEST SHOOT
Gabriel, Tiana, and Ali had created a small mock up set up with what they had in Gabriel’s living room; doing their best to emulate what the film was going to look like during the test shoot. As soon as I saw the footage I was shocked and inspired to see how much they were able to accomplish with a shoe string budget in someone's apartment living room.
Gabriel Jung had shot the test shoot in his apartment with the help of Ali Mango and Taiana Luccianoni. The footage was shot with a Sony a7Rii with a variety of lenses, mainly the 50mm Canon T1.5 and an EF to Sony adapter with some basic lights.
The lighting of the “set” was very enthralling, and the set design was beautifully arranged to create the depth and color contrast needed to really bring out the dynamic color range of movement and color.
After they had shot the pre-test shoot, I asked to get my hands on the footage to see what I could do with it. Gabe and Ali had entrusted me with creating a basic color palette regarding the direction of the film should go in, when it came to the coloring and grading of the film.
This was a job best suited for Blackmagic's Davinci Resolve 16, as the industry software has a noise reducer and grain emulator that is extremely advanced allowing for fine tune control. This required me to consult with Gabriel Jung about the film stock and really research the type and color cast and signal to noise ratio that was to appear due to the nature of the specific film emulation and its processing.
Thankfully the footage was shot accurately in S-log and I was able to do a lot of color correction and create a grade for the footage. The first steps are always to add contrast then balance the shot before I start my corrections and then proceed to creating a viable grade for the project.
Our inspiration for the color pallet was somewhere along the lines of Gangs of New York, Peaky Blinders, and Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie films). One of the things we were trying to do with the color of the film was looking at creating a warm film look to help create a feeling of loving nostalgia. Despite it being shot with daylight bulbs, there was enough warmth in the set design from the props to the candles, which I could use to warm up the image later on in Davinci Resolve.
Davinci Resolve is an amazing software all around, it stands out above the other software’s in the market, when it comes to film and digital color correction. It could definitely handle the job for not only the test shoot but also the future feature film.
PRE RIG DAY & PANAVISION RENTALS
TEST SHOOT 1
The day of the test shoot ran smoothly, thanks to the very hard work of Ali Mango, Gabriel Jung and Tiana Luccacioni done months prior.
The necessity of the test shoot was in order to test a combination of lenses, film stock, and filtration systems. It was also an opportunity to lay out the set design and see what worked best with each combination of the different systems. The combinations were recorded and written down as the directorial team and the camera team tried to get everything they needed in a single days shoot.
THE DEVILS APPLE TEST SHOOT
I’m very thankful to constantly work with such a respectful and motivating cast and crew. I’ve worked on many sets with these individuals who have never once made me feel out of place on set, despite set photography not always being the highest priority on low to medium budget sets. I try to take excessive photos of cast and crew when the delivery is for the google drive, as I really enjoy seeing the crew have access to the photos as soon as possible (with the consent of the producers of course). I see that it definitely can bring up crew morale when they can see the previous day’s work all ready for them to use for their IMDB profiles.
Prospective investors and financiers sometimes need to be able to visualize, and therefore value, their potential investments in order to be able to have some kind of sensation of trust towards the project. Conversely, being an independent filmmaker comes with a lot of challenges and being able to provide not only behind the scenes photography, but also film stills can instill great confidence while at the same time portraying great competence to whomever may be interested in investing in your film. At the end of the day, though, there is nothing more valuable than being able to hand over a mock up DVD case or film poster to an investor or financier and have them actually feel the gravity of everyone’s hard work and commitment.
I was tasked with making sure I could capture the best promotional images as well as enough set photography to show potential financiers and investors. Having set photographs allows for the creation of mock up marketing content as well as a good visual guide to follow during meetings early on.