Professional Profile - January 2011

Cinematographer Paul Howard has been shooting a wide range of award-winning productions in Australia and Internationally for over 20 years. He is a versatile DOP whose experience covers a diverse range of projects including feature films, short films, television drama, TVCs and music videos.

Paul’s ability to create varied visual styles has been exemplified by his recent win of two Gold ACS Awards for his work on ‘Cold Sore’ and ‘Into My Arms’.

Cold Sore, shot on a Canon 7D, tells the tale of a woman unable to emotionally move on from her past. Working with director Matt Bird of Chesterfilm and producer Jaimi Chivers, Paul created a visually mysterious mood for this brooding piece.

Paul explains that he and Matt “...had talked about shooting a film using only a few prime lenses for years, mainly to structure a very distinct visual style. We loved the idea of lighting and framing each shot like portraiture stills. The 7D does have limitations, so we set some strict shooting rules so we could use the strengths of the camera.”

The film was shot with a 28mm, 50mm and 85mm, and apart from one sequence of handheld, there was no camera movement. Assigning lenses and lens heights to each character created boundaries for the visual structure.

Paul used a small lighting package for speed and efficiency, and incorporated practical lamps on dimmers to create a dark playground for the actors (Saskia Burmeister - The Jammed and Henry Nixon - The Pacific).

“I loved not moving the camera as it forced us to block the action within static frames and allowed me more freedom to stylise the lighting for every shot.”

Into My Arms, directed by Angus Stevens and produced by Belinda Mravicic, was
shot on a Sony F35 with Zeiss master primes. The story deals with a father’s struggle to bond with his new born son.

“There is something about telling a true story that emotionally charges a set, especially when you’re dealing with babies and most of the crew are parents”, describes Paul.

Predominantly set at night in a hospital ward, the director envisaged a tangible, documentary style so almost every shot was handheld.

“Handholding the F35 with the recorder attached is heavy work. I do love shooting handheld though, so chasing an actor on a 75mm lens is my kind of fun”.

Paul used a simple colour palette, making the world of main character ‘Ben’ (Steve Le Marquand (Beneath Hill 60) cold and sterile and everywhere else warm and inviting. Paul utilized an extremely shallow depth of field to visually isolate ‘Ben’, while also allowing moments of soft focus.

“I had an HMI / Kinoflo lighting package which allowed us to light the sets in the hospital ward in a time effective manner, and I also used the existing surgery lights”, says Paul. “The F35 is a joy to shoot and grade, and the exposure latitude enabled me to delve into the beautiful subtleties of underexposure.”

‘Ben’s’ window reflections were created in camera using rear projection. “It was an easy way for us to control the foreground reflections and a more cost effective way of capturing these pivotal moments for the director.”

Paul describes his approach to cinematography as an emotional one. “It’s wonderful to have a job where I can be a part of creating images that reflect my emotional response to the words on a page. These days I’m more intuitive in my approach to shooting.”

“It was great fun shooting such radically different films, and to win ACS Gold awards for both is quite an honour.”

The trailers for both films can be seen here: