"DON'T LET HIM IN" (2010)
Coldwood Productions
Director: Kelly Smith
Producers: Andy Mindel, Mike Mindel, Kelly Smith
S16mm - 1.85

This has been my first attempt at shooting a horror piece, and perhaps that was what got me really interested initially. I got into this project very late with no much time left in preproduction. Something I will try to avoid in the future... but like I said, the matter of the genre kept me going.

Met a few times with director Kelly Smith to talk about the visualization of the script as well as getting all the equipment and crew organized in a matter of days.

Although the initial idea was to shoot this project on the Red One camera, I managed to convince Kelly to shoot this on film, as that is the format that this particular project demanded. Kelly has been delighted about that decition after watching the rushes.

I shot on Kodak Vision 3 7219 (rated 400 ASA) and Vision 2 7217 (rated 160 ASA)
I have shot 7219 in numerous ocasions and I can't say enough good things about this stock.

The pictures above are non graded framegrabs from the Digi rushes although I corrected them slightly in Photoshop to add them here.

As expected, there was a micro budget and a semi-crazy schedule over a few weeks in various locations in southern England. I didn't have the most up to date lighting equipment or the latest remote heads, but working under these circumstances forces me to be more creative with my approach to visualize the story.

The film is featured in the March 2012 issue of the American Cinematographer magazine.