Woman in Film "DEAF WEST THEATRE"

Executive Producer: Varda Hardy
Producer: Theresa Marth
Director/Writer: Jane Selle Morgan
Writer: Sarah Jane Johnson
Editor: Adam Svatek / Filmcore
Cinematographer: Daron Keet
Colorist: Shane Reed / Riot

The commercial highlights two actors relaying their message for "Deaf West Theatre" via spoken word and American Sign Language [ASL]. In addition to the performance, director/writer Jane Selle Morgan wanted to incorporate closed captions and motion Graphic elements to communicate the message.

Our idea was to have a moving camera that would flare in and out of the theatre lights as we covered the action on stage. The flared out moments would be transition opportunities to seamlessly cut into the captions, before cutting back out to the live action.

To capture the look for the story, we decided to use Panavision older Mark II Ultra Speed lenses, plus Panavision 35mm and 75mm "flare" lenses. These lenses allowed us to shot at a very shallow depth of field, and to augment the flared out look we were after.

I intentionally lensed from very low camera angles, so that we would hit the theatre lights at the perfect sweet spot angles, thus maximizing flares. We shot on a super 35mm Panavision Platinum camera in the1:85 format. We used Kodak Vision 500 ASA stock so that we could take advantage of the theatres preexisting lighting fixtures and available ambience. I enhanced the theatres lighting mood with a small tungsten lighting package, in order to key the talent in the most dramatic manner against the dimly lit theatre space. I used 1K tunston lights with a 1/4 grid-cloth for diffusion on the talent, and source four and parcan lights to rake the background. We used a Rosco 1700 fogger to fog up the theatre for dramatic beams of light. We shot 13 camera setups for the spot in a ten hour day.