Behind the scenes | In Godsnaom

Somewhere on a cold windy winter day in January, the shooting days of the short fiction film "In Godsnaom" took place. The film is set in a confessional booth on top of a mountain in the middle of the Limburg Hill Country. The story is about a female priest who ends up in a South Limburg Catholic community. Soon villagers notice the confession booth. The village is very enthusiastic about the qualities of the new priest. Until they find out that the new priest turns out not to be a man, but a woman. Something that is really not acceptable within the Catholic community.

Choice of lens

The film is slightly absurd. The scenes are long and uncomfortable. To make that visible on camera we chose to shoot everything statically from a tripod. As a viewer, this puts you in a voyeur position. You hope for movement somewhere, but you are forced to look at the situation. We wanted to shoot everything wide and therefore opted for the Cine zoom Laowa OOOM 25-100 mm T2.9. This lens can go very wide, but the zoom capabilities made it easy for us to fine tune the frames from a tripod where needed. Composition and symmetry are very important in this film. So every millimeter zoom ensured a perfectly symmetrical frame. We filmed with a small aperture. This was important because both the foreground and background had to be sharp.

Choice camera

The Blackmagic URSA mini Pro 4.6K G2 was an ideal camera for us to work with. The Blackmagic menu system is very easy to use and the built-in ND filters were ideal. The whole film takes place outside and so we had to deal with lights that changed throughout the day. Since the camera shoots 12 bit RAW, we have options in post for the grading which is also very important for this film. A good addition was the Tilta Matte Box Swing Away, where two filters can fit. We used a Black Promist ¼ which made the light softer and more heavenly. The matte box is super easy to use because you can swing it open, as the name suggests. So you don’t need to take the whole box off when switching lenses and there is room for a second filter such as a pola.

Choice of light

Because we were filming everything outside and we didn't have access to power or an aggregator, we were very limited with lighting options. We mostly used natural light for the wide shots. For the medium and close shots we used black flags that filtered out the unnecessary light. For the shots in the confessional, we had a specific lighting plan. We wanted to create as natural a light as possible through the holes of the confessional which would then reflect beautifully on the face of the priestess. For this purpose we used the Nanlite Forza 60 Bi-color LED Light. We were able to adjust the color temperature so it blended well with the light outside. This light worked on V-mount batteries which was ideal for outdoors. The brightness was also enough for the desired effect.