Albert & Luna

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Albert & Luna

2023

The story about a girl Luna falling for an adult man - sensitive and intelligent Albert. Burdened by the girl's excessive attention, the older friend tries not to offend her.

This film is my diploma work in the specialty Director of Phatography at the St. Petersburg State Institute of Film and Television.

I approached her with maximum responsibility and attention. I was involved in all stages of the film's production, from the selection of the work to the final editing. It was important for me to immerse myself in the process as much as possible and participate in the creation of every detail of the film.

I paid special attention to finding locations and choosing costumes. It was important to me that the clothes of the characters not only harmonize with the locations, but also fulfill a dramatic task, revealing the characters in each situation.

Once the costumes and locations were decided, I began working with color. In advance, I prepared the film LUT that I was going to work with, and then in the pavilion I created a location that corresponded to the color scheme of the main location of the film.

In this pavilion we held acting rehearsals and costume tests. Moreover, in this pavilion I conducted camera movement tests and checked compositional solutions to make sure that the camera movement would correspond to the style I had in mind and fit harmoniously into the editing with adjacent frames.

I also carried out many technical tests to be 100% confident in the quality of the material.

Due to a limited budget, the Arri Alexa Classic camera was chosen. Its color palette initially worked well with the film, but most importantly, it had the dynamic range I needed.

I needed to achieve detailization behind the windows in the scenes filmed in Albert's apartment, where we often shot towards the windows behind which were beautiful old buildings. In this cell there was no space for me, with me and the program.

Color scheme of the dance scene, outside the window 36 pieces 1 kW fresnel on skylift

Its main problem was strong noise in the shadows and insufficient plasticity and detail in the shadows.

To fix this problem, I had to conduct many tests and find the optimal method of exposure. I slightly overexposed the entire image, especially in the dark areas, and refilled the shadows to reduce the shadow exposure in post-production and thus achieve plasticity and detail in the shadows.

The optics I chose for this film were the Lomo Illumina III. These optics preserved the traditions of retro optics of the USSR, but provided better quality and resolution. The image produced by this optic is soft but highly detailed.

In addition, these lenses do not have an aspherical lens, and at any focal length they have spherical aberration. When using ultra-wide-angle lenses, this adds a certain artificiality to the scene.