My First Cinematography Project: Clichés Short Film by Christopher Pinto

A while back I wrote a collection of short stories and flash fiction entitled “A Flash of Noir”. So when I needed a concept for my first short cinematography project, naturally went right to the manuscript for ideas.

My short story “Clichés” fit the bill – short, clever, funny, Noir, with only two characters and minimal set changes. The concept is simple: a fun story made up entirely of clichés used in Hollywood and in everyday speech. (You’d be surprised how often we use them. For instance, there are two in the previous sentence, and one in this one).

The story is about a man who is disillusioned with life in general, and goes on a sort of quest to “find himself”. The time period isn’t given, but the mannerisms are 1940s Noir with a touch of more modern influences, like the 1985 Eldorado he drives. He takes a walk, ends up a lounge, meets a sultry woman…all clichés.

I of course decided to “shoot” in black and white, meaning I used a LUT on the camera that gave a close approximation of how the edited (color timed) final would look. Since I played “the man” in this film, I used mostly tripod shots. However for scenes where my wife, Cameron Nolan, played the mysterious woman, I used a handheld/gimbal method to give her more movement and life.

I also decided to use fairly harsh lighting on most of this project to give that high-contrast, Noir film-making style. Since this was my first project, it took me some time to learn and set up the lighting. I did several tests with the camera before actually shooting.

Keep in mind I shot this after only having a high-end cinema camera for about a month. I had to learn how to use it, lighting, and using the gimbal before taking on this project.

The hardest part was getting the sound decent. Although most of it was done as narration, there are some scenes where the two characters interact. This proved difficult as these scenes took place at night on our outdoor lanai, and the people behind us were having a rather loud party. So the sound quality isn’t the best, but I managed to isolate most of our dialog, and used sound effects of background bar noises to blend their party with ours.

I also decided to use Tanya by Dexter Gordon as the music. As a musician, I am very particular about the music I use in anything I do. And, as an artist, I always time my scenes to the music. This was mostly done in post, but I wrote the script with this song in mind, so musical accents, solos etc. fit in perfectly with the action.

I have to give a lot of credit to Cameron Nolan for bringing her cliché of a character to life, making such worn-out lines as “I can take you places you’ve never seen” into something new, fresh, and sultry.

Overall I’m happy with how my first project turned out. Is it perfect? By no means. If I had a chance to reshoot it would I do anything differently? I’d be more careful with the focus in a few places, (I had to cut some really good takes because they were out of focus), I’d do the sound much better, and I’d do one or two different angles & lighting more reminiscent of 1940s and ‘50s Film Noir. Besides that, I think I did pretty good for only doing this for a month!

This movie is available to watch free here.