PFL give their time to first "Create Not Hate" film for Quiet Storm
"Create Not Hate" is a new initiative set-up by leading ad agency/production company Quiet Storm, to enable inspiring role models from the creative industries to mentor young people directly or indirectly affected by gun and knife crime. Quiet Storm teamed up with Lambeth Academy and visual effects specialists Prime Focus London (PFL) to launch their first film, "A Mother's Tear".
The film is an intensely powerful two minute short written by Lambeth teenagers Jaron Williams and Alimur Rahman, who both knew Billy Cox who was shot dead in Lambeth last year. Co-directed by up and coming young director Dennis Gyamfi, who himself left a gang in Brixton to pursue a directing career, and award winning commercials director Trevor Robinson, the film centres on the mother of a boy who had just fallen victim to gun-crime.
The film uses her tears as a device to connect the various scenes within the short; from being a tear on her face, to a bead of sweat on the forehead of her son's killer, to a drop of blood from her son's bullet wound. A poem is read as the scenes play out, ending with the haunting line "Not one mother cries because her son's gone, but two".
With most of the cast members having some gang related experience to draw upon, the intensely powerful and evocative imagery was all grounded in realism. "Instead of showing a weapon or glamorising violence in any way, we wanted to appeal to the audience emotionally" explain Williams and Rahman. The brief required PFL to help imbue the piece with an intense gritty realism, and to ensure that visual effects were seamlessly incorporated into the film.
Using Flame's 3D camera tracker, the main challenge for PFL was to manipulate the generic blood elements into the shots - tracking, warping and grading to combine the elements into one realistically flowing movement. This was crucial to the film's dynamic, with some of the most dramatic close up shots built up using a combination of textures and ghosted images to provide real impact.
The combination of shot elements, and 3D simulated Realflow blood-trails created by the PFL CG team, made this the most challenging aspect of the visual effects work. Once completed, PFL telecine maestro Tareq gave the piece its gritty, realistic and dramatic look.
"It was a difficult brief we set, to create moving drips of blood which had a life of their own, but Prime Focus rose to the challenge! They displayed the utmost patience and professionalism throughout, whether it was involving the 15 year old writers by letting them experiment on their machines, or whether it was dealing with comments like: ?Can you make the blood look less like Ribena!" said Cat Campbell Berry, Executive Producer. "We are extremely grateful for Prime Focus's involvement on this project and we look forward to working with them in the future".
Not only Quiet Storm, but everyone working on the film gave their time for free - the producers, directors, cast, crew, and the team from PFL - giving the opportunity to these young people to have a voice and inspire youngsters to turn away from gang culture.
"Prime Focus were so up for helping out in any way they could. I am truly grateful for their continual enthusiasm in helping create this film with such tight deadlines, and it was a bonus meeting so many nice people along the way. No matter what the ask, Prime Focus were there 100 percent. And their team were so keen to help us out for this wonderful cause, from 3D to graphics to online to DCP" said Michelle Fraser, Producer at Quiet Storm Films.
Both Williams and Rahman seem to have been inspired by this experience. Williams wants to become a writer and director while Rahman has other ideas. "I've really got a bug for Post Production especially the editing and the grading. Crinan (the editor) taught us a lot, and so did Tareq (the colourist). They made it look really easy and I'm sure that takes years of experience but I think I can do it". Director Trevor Robinson agrees, "It seems that the scheme is successfully opening up the creative industries to a pool of talented young people."
Project: A Mother's Tear
Client: Quiet Storm/ Lambeth Academy
Executive Producer: Cat Campbell Berry
Agency Producer: Ben Exley
Producer: Michelle Fraser
Post Production: Prime Focus London (PFL)
3D: John Harvey
Flame: Simon Huhtala, Derek Moore, Pete Young
Colourist: Tareq Kubaisi
VFX Producer: Chris Chard
You can view the film at the following link:
http://www.vtr.co.uk/clientaccessNew/pickled/?id=ce5eeb2c17d0404 |
