Modern London and all it encompasses, the hopes and dreams, the frustrated ambitions and the multi-culturalism were all aspects of the script for “Other Side of the Game” that drew me to the project. I had been looking for an opportunity to shoot my first feature for quite a while and I loved the script. When I met Sav Akyuz and Lajaune Lincoln, the writer/directors, their enthusiasm and vision for the film was infectious and I was delighted when they asked me to shoot it. As Lajaune has since said “with so many Londoners coming from everywhere but London it was important that we portrayed that richness and diversity but did so with respect and credibility.”

Contrary to what may be assumed it was no problem at all working with two directors. Sav and Lajaune had studied film together and were old friends who had a great working relationship. Because they had written the script together they were very intimate with the material and were able to make any necessary tweaks very quickly. Surprisingly, given the tight schedule, there was time within the day for the actors to rehearse, Lajaune normally took this role while Sav and I worked on the setups. However this was not written in stone as their roles were readily interchangeable.

Working in many small apartments meant that we were often using wider angle primes and this became a stylistic feature of the cinematography. It helped to give us a sense of scale, on exteriors as well as interiors, and it also worked well with the hand held style of the film to give a great sense of movement. As the drama progresses, it also contributes to giving a feeling of disorientation to Tony on his closer shots. This was also accentuated by placing him in the frame so he was looking towards the closed side of the 1.85 frame rather than into the space. This worked to particular effect in an important scene where Tony is fast running out of options and he almost gets trapped in a very claustrophobic space with narrow constricted corridors leading to a room where he has a meeting. As he is left alone it dawns on him that he has put himself in a very vulnerable situation. I was lighting this scene with a combination of kinos and uncorrected fluorescents to give him a slightly green pallid feel. There follows a chase sequence which I shot with a very wide angle lens and which I think works very well.

Technicolor Creative Services scanned the neg in at 2k and the DI was graded in one of their Lustre Suites. As I referred to earlier, during the course of the drama Tony’s character suffers from frustrated ambition as he tries to set up a legitimate business, while simultaneously his life descends into a nightmare generated by the not so legitimate side of his and his business partner’s enterprises; a world he is trying to leave behind yet is seemingly unable to due to forces at work beyond his control. During the course of the narrative there was a pivotal point at which I wanted to accentuate the more contrasty look I had introduced on the set, to coincide with Tony’s decline, by bringing in a bleach bypass effect and then carrying it through to the end of the film, gradually increasing it by degrees in the grade. We managed to achieve this in the grade and we are all extremely pleased with the result.

Having watched it on the big screen several times I am very impressed with how super 16 holds up to large scale presentation, I am sure this is in part due to Kodak’s modern film stocks and the DI. Our processing was handled by Vaughn Mullady of iLab who gave us sterling backup. Matt Adams of Technicolor Creative Services and Max Horton (colourist) did an amazing job and helped us to produce a fantastic result. The assistants, Sacha Jones and Kat Spencer, 1st and 2nd assistants respectively, were terrific. Overall it was a tremendous experience and I am looking forward to the next one.

Graham Martyr GBCT Director of Photography