Sep 6, 2021 | Documentary / Short Film

“4 Lives / The Artist”

Director / Cinematographer / Editor / Colourist

“4 Lives / The Music Producer” is the third in a series of interviews with people experiencing differing impacts of the SARS- COV-2 virus. In this film I meet artist Craig Moffat who talks about the impact of COVID on someone living with mental health challenges.

“4 Lives / The Artist” is part of Locked Down Lives, which is a series of short films that explore the human consequences of the global pandemic.

I was solely responsible for the end-to-end creation of this film taking on the roles of Director, Cinematographer, Editor and Colourist.

Craig is an incredibly detailed artist so the tasks was to capture the detail of his art, and — at the same time — how focussing on creativity blocks out the noise of the outside world. In order to achieve this I shot extreme close ups of his art supplies, and the artwork itself. I shot these close ups on a vintage 50mm Carl Zeiss Jena lens with a wide aperture. This created the opportunity to leverage a short depth of field, and to rack focus to shift the viewers attention to different parts of the art. The short depth of field was also used in close ups of Craig himself to throw the background out of focus and create a beautiful bokeh, reinforcing the idea that concentrating on creativity takes one out of the worries of daily life.

"4 Lives / The Artist" coming soon

© 2019-24 Nick Payne