THE LOOK
I think the look is where a significant opportunity lies. I want to shoot this PSA with a format that I think lends itself symbolically to the significance of our material, while offering a visual style that I have yet to see in a PSA. That involves the largest shooting format possible: Alexa65 large format cameras.
House of the Dragon for instance— which was shot on that camera. But I believe choosing a “grander format” for something that is as minimal as this brings focus to the importance of the subjects and the story we are telling.
Beautiful depth and rendering of faces, perfect skin tones, and an unmatched sensitivity to light that gives us room to really hone a beautiful colour grade— this type of care in the image is often remiss in the “standard PSA” look. We want this to be incomparable to any other PSA, so let’s express that in the look as well.
For variance in action and angles, I love the idea of including gestures and details in the piece similar to the CCCP PSA. In all honesty, because we were restricted for time for that shoot, I wish I was able to explore those smaller details like hands, eyes, and looks that much further. Perhaps including momentos or small objects from their service. We could try to do all of that here.
I see us having two major wide shots. A setup shot that allows our viewer into our process— perhaps with Adam sitting down to be the interviewer, or potentially showing some of our equipment and setup right off the bat so we acknowledge an open dialog about our process.Then a final wide of all our veterans interacting together, perhaps with Adam involved. I even think a formal locked off “portrait” of the group for the end could be very powerful.
One final point on DP— Something that we could look into would be to work with someone that has worked with Adam before. This allows an immediate familiarity that puts him at ease right away. Dariusz Wolski comes to mind as someone we could potentially try to get to do this who I think would do an amazing job at both visuals and setting that professional precedent.
Can’t wait to talk about this more.