Interview with Sony Future Filmmaker Award 2023 winner Dan Thorburn

We speak to the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards 2023 winner of the Fiction class Dan Thorburn on the method behind his brief movie ‘Salt Water City’, on drawing cinematography inspiration from portray, recommendation for college students and newbie videographers, in addition to his favorite digital camera to take images with.

‘Salt Water City’s protagonist is Liam, a younger man craving to flee the small Welsh coastal city he grew up in. The movie follows Liam’s determined makes an attempt to persuade his father Glenn to depart with him after an inspection of the land the failing caravan park they run finds it to be nugatory resulting from rising sea ranges.

The six winners of the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards 2023, which celebrates work by creators and unbiased filmmakers around the globe, had been introduced on 22 February 2023. Winners had been rewarded with money prizes, a spread of Sony’s Digital Imaging gear and a three-day business immersion expertise led by Sony Footage executives. This awards competitors notably had an surroundings class and awards for a contest open to brief movies completely shot on smartphones and the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards 2024 is at present open for entries.

How did it really feel to have your movie win the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards Fiction class?

Thorburn mentioned that although the movie had finished nicely in festivals it had performed in, profitable wasn’t anticipated, ‘All the opposite movies we had been up in opposition to within the class had been phenomenal, made by some actually cool filmmakers… We thought as a result of it’s such a regional piece and it’s so grounded in its regionality, in its sort of British and Welshness, that possibly that’s what wasn’t translating over to the US.’

Regardless of it coming as ‘a as an actual shock’ Thorburn mentioned, ‘It was only a tremendous thrilling course of to undergo and meet the wonderful folks at Sony. And I actually loved that award ceremony, which was a very cracking evening.’

How was the writing, filming, enhancing course of for Salt Water City?

Thorburn mentioned, ‘It was a narrative that sort of half fell into our lap and half was one thing that we (Thorburn and his co-writer Jack Sherratt) knew we wished to inform. We had been tremendous concerned with telling these intergenerational tales of the aggression of youth in comparison with that of older generations and the anger that lots of younger folks on this nation, particularly within the areas, are feeling proper now when it comes to financial hardship.’

Thorburn and Sherratt had been additionally eager to discover local weather change which has been arrange as a looming backdrop within the closing piece. This was impressed by a information article a couple of city in North Wales combating rising sea ranges and the ocean partitions now not with the ability to be held up by authorities funding, leading to land being decommissioned, together with folks’s houses and companies.

They had been additionally impressed by each of their childhoods rising up in Manchester and spending time at caravan parks in North Wales. Thorburn and Sherratt truly wrote nearly all of the script in a caravan website in North Wales, saying that it ‘actually helped us to sort of seize that actually visceral area the place the movie is about.’

The manufacturing course of was pushed again due to COVID and ‘there was lots of further stress on us and with it being fairly a giant manufacturing involving lots of shifting elements with autos and horses and animals and VFX and SFX and smoke and hearth and all these loopy issues, it actually felt like a manufacturing that was both going to make an enormous mark and are available collectively in a very sensible means or might all sort of come crashing down. What gave me lots of reassurance and felt just like the sort of glue that actually made me really feel assured in regards to the piece as we had been making it was working with Owen Teale and Tom Glynn-Carney, the 2 main forged members. They’re such well-versed actors and so they each totally understood the position and their characters, and their chemistry was improbable proper from the offset.’

A whole lot of emphasis is commonly positioned like on the opening scene of a movie. Are you able to describe how you bought the one in Salt Water City?

‘The unique opening scene for ‘Salt Water City’ was utterly totally different from what it’s now. Wanting again, me and Jack would each chortle and saying that it was sort of pretentious what we’d initially deliberate. The unique opening was Owens’s character floating in simply his underwear within the ocean. It was a chicken’s eye shot trying down and so they took a giant exhale and sunk himself below the water, after which we opened into the motorcycle stuff. For a very long time we had been like, that is precisely how we need to begin it. It’s actually arty, it’s actually highly effective.’

Nevertheless, with pre-production taking six months resulting from COVID, Thorburn mentioned he and Sherratt had time to reassess whether or not it actually was how they wished to open the movie and if it was only a piece of artwork for the sake of it.

The scene was redrafted to the model that made it into the ultimate reduce of the movie, wherein we see Liam stealing petrol from another person’s automobile whereas speaking on the telephone about alternatives for himself and his father. Thorburn seems like this scene works finest because it connects the start of the movie to the top and launched the viewers right away to the character.

Talking of artwork, you had been initially finding out to be a painter earlier than altering to movie. Does this affect how you consider the look of your movie?

Thorburn mentioned he all the time wished to be a painter and initially studied Wonderful Artwork on the College of the Arts London earlier than switching to movie. ‘I’d by no means actually performed with movie as a language or medium, however I had a tutor there who started to get me within the shifting picture and enjoying with discovered footage. I began making some items that means and that’s what actually led me into utilizing sort of a visible shifting picture as an artwork medium and I believe from that, I sort of naturally discovered my place as a director and as a storyteller and a author.’

Since then his background in wonderful artwork has formed his filmmaking and Thorburn describes himself as a visible director and that this helps when working with cinematographers in addition to co-writers.

One specific scene in ‘Salt Water City’ wherein Owen Teale, who performs Glenn, is sitting on a seaside earlier than laying on his aspect was impressed by a Robert Rauschenberg portray. The digital camera stays on him in a close-up shot earlier than turning to the ocean which slowly however absolutely edges nearer.

© Dan Thorburn, United Kingdom, Salt Water City, Shortlist, Filmmaker, Fiction, Sony Future Filmmaker Awards 2023.

What recommendation do you might have for pupil and newbie filmmakers?

‘The recommendation that everybody will all the time say, which is which is tremendous true, is simply go and make stuff. Begin enjoying, use no matter you’ve obtained. We used to shoot stuff, not on our telephones, however on actually outdated DSLR’s, Canon 600Ds. It doesn’t matter in regards to the high quality, what issues is the collaboration within the filmmaking course of, that’s an important factor.’

‘Go on the market and meet different folks… I couldn’t have finished something I did with out an incredible workforce surrounding me. I believe that’s step one you’ve obtained to do as a director, as a author. Discover a producer that you simply belief, discover any individual who shares your inventive imaginative and prescient. Discover a DOP (Director of Pictures) or a cinematographer with whom you may talk with and you may be taught to stability these concepts round with.’

‘That’s my large piece of recommendation, simply get on the market and begin assembly different folks and shoot no matter you may with whoever you may and also you’ll solely preserve getting higher. It’s a protracted course of, however simply take pleasure in it.’

You’ve been posting some images in your Instagram, what digital camera do you employ and what sort of images do you wish to take?

‘On the minute I shoot on a Fujifilm X100V which I completely like to bits.’ Thorburn, who shoots lots of panorama images, says he significantly enjoys the movie simulation settings. Earlier than that he used to shoot on a Sony A6000.

What cameras do you employ for filming?

Lots of Thorburn’s movies have been shot on ARRI Alexa Minis, that are compact film cameras whose symmetrical design permits for filming upside-down and in portrait mode.

Thorburn is worked up to make use of the Sony Venice FX-7 cameras he obtained from Sony after profitable the Awards, probably in his subsequent challenge, ‘It’s a quite simple piece of equipment that we are able to pull out and run, particularly within the sort of model that lots of my work is in’.

What do you like for enhancing video?

Although many within the business swear by Avid for video enhancing, Thorburn nonetheless prefers Adobe Premiere Professional, ‘It’s client but it surely’s simple to make use of and, it all the time felt sort of good and easy. I do know some folks have issues with it, however I’ve all the time been fairly comfy utilizing that if I’m reducing myself… That’s what I used to be taught to chop on (at college), and if it was as much as me, I’d nonetheless be reducing on that right now.’

Watch Dan Thorburn’s ‘Salt Water City’:

About Dan Thorburn:

© Dan Thorburn

Dan Thorburn is an award-winning author and director from the North of England. Initially a painter, he studied at Central Saint Martins Faculty of Artwork in London the place he transitioned his follow into movie. He has directed a spread of profitable dramas (Salt Water City, Trucker’s Atlas), gaining recognition from festivals around the globe, and acquired funding from the British Movie Institute. Alongside his arthouse social realism work, his portfolio additionally expands to up to date dance movie. He at present has two function movies in growth and is working as co-creator on a coming-of-age tv drama.

See extra of Dan’s work on his web site.

This interview has been shortened for size and readability.

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