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Photographing Stephanie Daley - David Morrison
"Stephanie Daley" was captured in High Definition video (Sony F-900/3) in various locations in upstate New York. We used Canon Digi prime lenses and occasionally a Canon 10:1 zoom. The idea was to strip the camera down and make it as small as possible, a lot of the houses and offices were small and this sometimes made filming difficult. HD is not an entirely evolved format yet. Unlike film it has a limited contrast range and excessive depth of field, both of which can hinder the image and ultimately distract the viewer. My responsibility as the Director of Photography was to avoid these pitfalls and achieve our visual goals. There were many references in early discussions that helped inform and evolve the look of "Stephanie Daley." The influence that is the most apparent to me now are the paintings of Edward Hopper. His work has a lonely, contemplative feeling, even in populated spaces his characters seem to be lost in private moments. To me that was one of the underlying themes that I saw the first time I read "Stephanie Daley." All of the characters have secrets and we wanted to isolate them from one another within the frame either using architecture, light or composition. I think the bathroom scene with Amber is probably the climax of this idea, she is physically, audibly and visually removed from her environment. The actors were truly incredible and inspiring to work with. Every day I felt lucky to be able to be able to witness and photograph this timely and essential story.
On Shooting Hi-Def with David – Hilary Brougher
I'm pretty delighted that when most people see the film on 35mm, they have no idea it originated in HD. They simply find it beautiful and get caught up. We chose the format for the usual reasons of economy – also we had a tight schedule, and we needed speed to afford the cast enough time to explore the scenes. David Morrison's expertise was essential to pulling all this off – as was his great attitude and willingness to adapt on a dime. We had always discussed a certain naturalism (for example outside light informing interior spaces) and we soon embraced a strategy of being very responsive to our environment - discovering rather than asserting solutions. This is a wonderful way to work (regardless of format) and I think it brought to "Stephanie Daley" a deeper sense of place and emotion. View Timeline >> | 
