BE STILL MY BEATING HEART | RUTH PAXTON
BE STILL MY BEATING HEART explores the nature of mood disorders, and connected experiences of body dysmorphia, restricted eating, sleeplessness and novice-level meditative bondage. ’m interested in the difference between thoughts and feelings, altered states of consciousness and the psychological ‘work’ done in the subconscious, dreams and memory. Essentially, this horror is about a dame haunted by demons who quits running up the stairs and squares up to the demon instead. It’s about a whisperer letting herself roar. Like Katy Perry. Discovering,that the power of her true self is fierce enough to slay. - Ruth Paxton
The main lighting themes for me were the dominant use of sourced practical light fixtures; the character, quality, shape, colour and tonality of the fixture playing a huge part in how light is shaped inside the rooms. A use of mixed source lighting (tungsten/fluorescents/pinks/greens/blues) to add colour depth and separation. Soft heavily diffused wraparound light to compliment the funeral vibe. My intention was that the only truly hard light source will be the sunrise in the final scene. Everything before it an effervescent gauzy gloom.
We shot on an Alexa SXT with Cooke Xtal Anamorphic lenses, these were a bespoke set of vintage cooke s2 and s3 series lense rehoused in the 80's with anamorphic front elements and chosen for their speccific characteristics. The wider 25mm and 32mm in particular have a very warped distorted quality that enhances the phsycological tension of what's happening on screen. I wanted to expose in the lower register of the image to create a murky, nosiy denstiy to the image, underexposing and adding haze to lift the shadow detail, that would compliment the art direction and story.