Ember

The brief asked for a product film. What we delivered is closer to a portrait of a place at the end of its season.

Approach

Late autumn in the Vaucluse gives you about four usable hours a day and a colour palette you could not build in a grading suite. Rather than fight the short days we planned around them, shooting only between eleven and four and using the mornings to scout.

Everything was shot on 35mm. The decision was practical as much as aesthetic — the grain holds the warmth in a way that a clean digital negative flattens, and it forced a discipline about how many takes each setup got.

On location

A crew of six, no artificial light, and a hard cut-off at four each afternoon. When the light went, the day ended, which meant every call sheet was written backwards from sunset.

The location was a working farm rather than a set, so the film had to accommodate whatever was happening that day. Two of the strongest shots were unplanned and neither survived the first assembly — they came back in the third.

Delivery

A three-minute film, a ninety-second cut, and twelve stills scanned from the original negative. The grade holds the warmth rather than correcting it out, which was the whole argument of the film.