How to Make Moving Pictures

7 minute read

How to Make Moving Pictures

Filmmaker Phillip Vernon talks about the importance of contrast in moviemaking and how his GFX100 helps him achieve it

“Everyone who knows me says I can be quite a restless and antsy person,” laughs Phillip Vernon. “I think that definitely comes out in my filmmaking style.” As an experienced director, cinematographer and editor at LA production company, MGX Creative, Phillip has worked on many high-profile projects, including documentary shorts, advertising spots, and music promos, each showcasing his infectious energy. The creative agency has an agenda of stylistic and emotional storytelling, which recently included a promo for FUJIFILM X100V called Out of Office.

“I have a real love for movement and color in film,” Phillip continues, “so when I’m making something, I just want to be all go, go, go!” It’s clear very quickly that he reflects this energy through his varied roles. “I like to jump around in a lot of respects,” he explains. “I direct, I film, I edit, I like to work with the art department on stuff, and I can do a little acting, too!” And while he recalls film classes at high school, it seems he discovered his real love for filmmaking away from the academic setting. “In whatever role I had, I realised the best weekends I could have were when I was filming with friends – not going to a party, not playing sports, but working on a movie.” Next, he studied cinema at Chapman University. “I was kind of like a ‘set rat’ – one of the kids who is always on set every weekend, or editing, because I just liked getting my hands on a bunch of different projects,” he explains

So, which movies would Phillip say influenced his filmmaking the most? Were they all of a similar style? “Not really,” he responds. “In fact, many of the movies I’m drawn to, and the ones that excite me as a viewer, are very different to the things I end up making. But of course, as a creative, your subconscious learns from them all. For instance, I love Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. It’s dark, but still kinetic. And then there’s Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie that’s often quite static. It’s more about exploring ideas, but then after two hours of more methodical filmmaking, it explodes into movement and color at the end.

“But there are movies I love that are much more similar in style to my own,” he continues. “Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs the World is a great example. It’s exaggerated, there’s a lot of color, and music plays a massive part in that movie. So, if I was to describe my style, it’d be a sort of heightened naturalism like that. I want to make the viewer’s heart flutter, make them lean in – but not because they’re impressed by something technical – because they’re enchanted enough to care, and they want to know what’s going to happen next.”

Those aspects of Phillip’s style are displayed clearly in MGX Creative’s short that promotes the launch of FUJIFILM X100V. It’s a pop-promo advert in style that was conceived around the original tagline to ‘make everyday remarkable’. “We distilled that concept into a narrative. Based on the brief, and drawing on some of my own influences, we wanted to make it fantastical and hyper real, because it’s supposed to be about escaping the everyday,” he says, outlining the piece.

“So,” he continues, “we start off in this drab office that the character escapes, and she starts to experience these great moments with the camera.” The promo for X100V has an almost hypnotically kinetic feel, bouncing along from one great moment to another like a dance sequence in a classic movie musical. This was very much on Phillip’s mind when creating it. “I took a lot of cues from films like La La Land – another film that has a form of heightened reality to it. It’s very stylized, but that weirdly that just makes it feel more like LA to me.”

Other inspirations for the project came by way of music videos, including Spike Jonze’s promo for Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice, The Avalanches’ Because I’m Me, directed by Greg Brunkalla, and Nadia Lee Cohen’s video for Kali Uchis’ After the Storm. According to Phillip, each of them features a vital ingredient – contrast.

“For me, contrast is everything in storytelling, and it’s one of my big rules to make sure there’s enough of it in my work.” But what does contrast in storytelling mean? “Well, it’s about contrasting moments,” Phillip explains. “For example, a single moment only hits as hard as I want it to, if what comes before is a foil. There could be a contrast marked by slow to fast movement, or two different emotions. It’s from those dynamic changes that you can build to a crescendo.

“Take Weapon of Choice, for example,” he continues. “That was a big reference for us. In terms of contrast, there’s Christopher Walken, who carries certain cultural baggage from the roles he’s played. The video starts with him basically asleep in a hotel lobby, but by the end, he’s flying around this ballroom, so the contrast makes it funny and is the reason it works. There are loads of videos around with great dancers and great locations, but if they lack contrast, they won’t stick in our consciousness the way that video did.”

In Phillip’s own Out of Office, the same contrast applies. The story begins in a dull environment with static cameras and muted colors, then slowly, it evolves into a free-flowing mix of joyous movement and color. “That’s how you bring these moments out and make them hit,” he explains. “At points, we’re trying to make the subject’s life in the office seem extra drab, so when the colorful and energetic parts kick in, they’re that much more effective.”

With the whole project created on GFX100 bodies, Phillip is quick to sing the praises of filmmaking on a larger format camera. “GFX100 functions so well in these more cinematic environments,” he says. “I’ve done three or four pretty big pieces with it – full sets with probably 40 or 50 person crews. It handles great, and certainly one of the advantages of using GFX is the manoeuvrability it gave us, which really suited this project. There are times when I’m a fan of putting the camera on a tripod and confining movement to a pan or a tilt. But in relation to our piece, and because we have this dancer who’s moving all around the park, we really wanted a movement that matched hers, so the audience could feel like they’re moving with her in the same fluid way.”

Using GFX100 on a Steadicam, Phillip felt the production gained that feeling of fluidity. “It was like you were walking and moving with her,” elaborates Phillip, “whereas if we’d used a dolly, that sometimes feels kind of cold and less human, because it’s not really how people move. In the end, that creates a subconscious separation between the audience and what they’re seeing. And though Steadicam can take much larger cameras, the smaller size and weight makes it much easier to swing around and do the sort of movements you want to. For Out of Office, we were on Steadicam for basically the entire day, so it’s much less strain on the operator.”

But of course, it’s GFX100’s image quality and faithful color reproduction that was the standout appeal for Phillip. “The image quality that GFX100 offers is awesome, and the control it gives you over color – which for me is the big thing with FUJIFILM products – perfectly matches my style. I’m always trying to make stuff vibrant, and this is a great camera for it. Sure, you can have a big, 8K resolution sensor these days, but it just doesn’t look or feel as good. GFX100’s 4K output gives me plenty of flexibility if I want to punch into a frame, but it’s really more the ineffable quality of the footage. The images from GFX100 really pop and grab your eye much more than other cinema cameras I’ve used.”

Explore the GFX system here or contact your nearest FUJIFILM Authorized Dealer for more information.


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