A driver crosses Manchester in the rain after a late shift, and the city slides past the windscreen in streaks of orange and blue.
Halden asked for a film about the drive home, not the car. Rafael's answer was sixty seconds that never leave the cabin: one driver, one route across Manchester after a late shift, and the city reduced to light on wet glass.
We shot over four nights in real rain, with a low-loader towing the car and a rain bar on standby for the one dry hour we got. Tomasz Wierzbicki hard-mounted a compact large-format camera behind the passenger seat and lit the interior almost entirely with the dashboard, adding a single dimmed tube under the roof lining for the driver's face. Vintage spherical primes at close focus turned every street lamp into a soft disc.
Felix Durand built the sound from the inside out: wipers, indicator, tyre hiss and the radio barely audible under Callum Reid's score. Clara Moss cut to the rhythm of the wipers rather than the music, which is why the film feels slower than it is.
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The Long Field
Offscreen Originals / Short film
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The clapperboard is not a prop
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Craft
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Lighting a room with one lamp
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Interviews
Yuna Sato
Yuna Sato and cinematographer Ama Boateng on lighting interiors with practicals for The Long Field and Signal, and why they rarely bring a light the audience cannot see.
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The Long Field premieres at Northlight Film Festival
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News
Hannah Reyes
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Grading Night Drive
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Craft
Eun-ji Park
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Annelise Vogt joins the roster
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News
Marcus Bell
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Casting real people
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Craft
Mara Okonkwo
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What a treatment is for
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Craft
Hannah Reyes
A director's treatment is a promise about a film, not a description of it. Hannah Reyes on what a good one does, what it should never try to do, and how we read them.
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A week in the edit of Feedback
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Behind the scenes
Daniel Okafor
Editor Daniel Okafor on one week of cutting Feedback, Kofi Mensah-Hart's tour film with The Lowlands, from 300 hours of rushes to a seventy-two minute film.
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