This was North/South Divide's biggest production yet, and was originally conceived for entry to the MUTV Shorts competition.
The small team meant that as well as post production, I also helped out on set as DIT, script supervisor and second assistant director.
Pacing was one of the most important factors to consider on this production. I needed to hold the shots for long enough for the viewer to empathise with the characters but not so long that their attention begins to drift.
In scenes with multiple characters, I had to take care to include shots of their best acting without taking away from the story. I could speed up or slow down the pace of a sequence as required.
I worked closely with the director with to get the pacing just right and to colour grade the picture to match the mood and flow of each scene.
For more intimate moments with the father, I coloured the scenes warmly. For scenes after the father's death, I mixed with cooler colours.
During the film, there are title cards indicating the passage of time through the matches and score. I suggested to the director to colour the scores the iconic colours of the teams.
We had hired a professional photographer for this production, and it was originally planned to use one of these images for the promotional material.
I instead however opted for a still taken straight from the film of the two main characters hugging in the heat of the moment. For me, this really encapsulated the film's overall theming and message by showing these two in motion, and felt more natural than the other photographs we had.
This is the primary shot we used for other promotional material, including a leaflet designed in the same style given out at the film's premiere.
The film was a great success and won the MUTV competition it was created for.
After this, we tendered the film out to several film festivals. For this, I produced a branded Blu-Ray Disc.
We were accepted into the Manchester Kinofilm Festival. I arranged the film's conversion into the cinema-standard DCP format. This really helped the film stand out, as it was running at full quality where others had obvious compression.
