Felices 140 Behind the Scenes

Stills photographer for Tornasol Films S.A.

I had always wanted to work on a film set in some capacity. Maybe stills photographer, or Shooting a making of video. By chance, my friend and photographer Jacques Metzger needed some cover as a stills photographer. Therefore, my chance had arrived. I packed my cameras and lenses and headed to the set.

The slideshow is best viewed in landscape

Felices 140, produced by Tornasol Films SA, was being filmed near to where I lived in Tenerife. There were three shoot locations. One in a villa in the hills, a studio in Santa Cruz and the other on the coastline. I had four Canon cameras each with a specific lens. I prefer having dedicated cameras each with their own lens. Changing lenses on one body allows dust to get on to the sensor. Tenerife is a volcanic islands with winds from the Sahara. Therefore there is plenty of dust!

To BTS or not BTS

I found the workload quite heavy. I kept thinking, I need to shoot stills, BTS and making of all at the same time. But the way the days naturally broke up in to different types of work, had me naturally taking photos for each section.

Cooperation was the key

The days were very busy with the inevitable early start. It wasn’t a ‘quite set’ as such, so I could use the Canons. The crew and cast were fantastic and very friendly. Consequently, I was able to ask the cast to re-enact the scenes for me to get the film camera’s angles. Some rooms were a bit tight on space, just enough roof for the main crew without me taking up valuable space. Everyone was used to me clicking away. However, in the confined spaces, the shutter was very loud. So this shoot prompted me to get the GH5. The camera is mirrorless, so no annoying and distracting camera clicks. This gave me more freedom. The number of stills I was taking rose significantly. So I had to make sure I was taking quality shots to maximise my time.

The slideshow is best viewed in landscape

Click, process, send

During the day, I had to process the shots as I went. This meant creating Making of, BTS, and Stills both high res and low res. In addition, the low res images had to go to Tornasol that day. In other words, click, process, send. Quite hectic, but OK once I got in to the rhythm. A very enjoyable project but it had the pressure there to deliver the goods to the marketing department so they could create their press releases using the photos.

To sum up. I was there a week in total and learnt a lot. You basically need to be everywhere at the same time. I liked to get there early. As a result, I would shoot BTS and Making of with the crew preparing the cameras, lights and set. The stills came during the takes. The key was to be organised, on time, think, flexible to the changing of the day, oh and eight arms!