Adam Ademski was born in my imagination when I had to write down the cinematographer section of the film for the ilm festival submissions. I decided to create a fictional character who would be credited as a cinematographer. In fact I was running the cinematographer job just before the shooting.
Our camera operators from Never Known Production Antoni Krastev and Hristo Hristov were very busy with their own projects so they agreed to be involved in NoOne but only as camera operators, because they didn’t have time for pre production etc. In fact I wasn't looking for a real cinematographer because I preferred the responsibilities for the visual part of the movie to be on my shoulders. I felt that I am experienced enough or at least I was thinking that from my previous experience until that point I would be able to pull off a feature film especially shot with a DSLR and gorilla style.
Having said that I would like to say that all of the guys who were shooting during NoOne did a tremendous job. The project happened to be much more difficult from what I told it would be. All of the guys, especially Hristo and Toni, were giving more than hundred percent from themselves in order to look as it looks now.
The film itself was edited with footage shot from more than five people but at the end all of the day fall of the film critics said that it looked as if one man was behind the camera.
Here comes the role of Adam Ademski which from this moment on will be my nickname for the projects where I am behind the camera. His role was to stand with a solid concept and an idea how this film would look like. However, that doesn't mean a rigid storyboard( by the way I have never worked with storyboards in my life) but a vision for the general style, color palette, visual grammar, mood, and feeling of the picture.
I was using several websites for references, every frame a painting, the site with the film's color schemes, also I looked at different films for references, I was looking at some of the best web video essays on cinematography and film-look.
During the production before to start the shooting I discussed the scene with the cast, we broke down their actions and reactions and we were rehearsing their dialogues. Then I went with the camera operators and we blocked the scene with the cast in it.
I was framing the shots I was choosing for which shot what kind of focal length, angle and camera move if any would be executed and needed. Randomly I was holding the camera. The camera operation is so demanding work, that If I had to do it by myself I wouldn't be able to continue the shooting after the first couple of days. So I was working with them more like a real cinematographer on a big budget film with the difference that I had a video monitor for only a couple of days and we were not using almost any lighting.
Shooting in nature, in real locations brings with itself so many benefits but also negatives. We basically were prisoners of the weather. We had more than 75-80% of the film in exterior, few of them were high up in the mountain where every morning is with a different weather condition what to say about the whole day. And we got very lucky because we had only a half of a day with rain. That was like a blessing from the sky, because in this place weather changes dramatically from a very hot day to freezingly cold night, from sunny mornings to stormy and rainy afternoons.
The cinematography for NoOne deserves an entire book for itself, because we did a tremendous job by making a real micro budget film to look like an expensive european arthouse production.
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