Play of lights and whites in 'The Griffon'

With photography by Juan Carlos Gómez and direction by Denis Rovira, Continental Producciones shoots with an ARRIFlex D21 supplied by EPC an interesting short that according to its production company “will not leave the viewer indifferent.” Due to the complexity of the shoot, the camera has been used both on the shoulder and on a tripod, crane and steady state.

With an opening sequence in 3D animation created by Studio Nest, a subsidiary of SixBirds Productions, it will begin The faucet, an interesting short that promises not to leave anyone indifferent. Filmed practically inside a villa in Villaviciosa de Odón, in addition to some outdoor scenes, it has been quite a challenge when it comes to working with light.

The director is Denis Rovira, with a successful career in the international fantasy film festival circuit, and in this, his fourth short film, he is committed to a “distressing” story that revolves around an extreme survival experience unleashed in a house. The photography direction of The Griffon, which was shot with the ARRIFlex D21 digital cinematography camera supplied by EPC, the firm Juan Carlos Gómez.

According to the Sensor de EPC, Gómez, who had recently shot Eduardo Chapero-Jackson's debut film with this same EPC camera, acknowledged that the team opted for the ARRI D21 "mainly because of the great image quality it offers in both the linear and logarithmic registers."

“The filming of The faucet It was developed largely in a location where almost everything was white, the walls, the furniture... Denis Rovira was interested in showing the contrast of that set with an elderly character who was on loan in that house," explains Juan Carlos Gómez. "We managed to obtain a great variety of nuances and details in the whites of the set thanks to the great latitude that the Arri D21 has. The final image has a lot of information in mid and low tones with a lot of richness in the highlights.”

Lights and whites

According to Denis Rovira, filming in a completely white house "is very difficult to photograph with depending on what digital camera, 120 shots in three days, which in the end turned out to be fewer, obviously as always happens in short films. Even so, the personal challenge and for the team was important and could only be achieved if the filming rhythm was constant and 'allegro', making an operatic simile."

For the director, the decision to use the ARRI D21 was a success before starting to shoot, as he told the EPC Sensor: “mentally, the visual part of the film with Juan Carlos Gómez was more than covered and I was able to dedicate myself completely to my great actors.”

The faucet It is headed by Celso Bugallo -who has the Goya for best supporting actor for Mar Adentro-, and by Ana Fernández -with a Goya for Solas-, in addition to Daniel Freire. The squad is completed by Enrique Asenjo and the children Carlos Sampedro and Carmen Sánchez.

For this shoot, EPC supplied along with the ARRI D21 a set of Cooke S-4 T2.0 optics (18mm, 25mm, 32mm, 40mm, 50mm, 75mm), 100mm Cooke and 135mm Cooke. Due to the complexity of the shoot, the ARRI D21 had to be used both on the shoulder and on a tripod, crane and steady.

Along with Juan Carlos Gómez, the technical camera team included Miguel A. Guijarro as camera assistant, Roberto Ruiz as camera assistant, and Rosario Gutiérrez and Álvaro Villegas as video assistant. The HD technicians are Luis Miguel Fernández and Gorka Oliver. And Juanjo Sánchez, steadycam operator. As a still photo, José Luis Tejedor, author of the photos we see. Beatriz Acinas has been responsible for executive production by Continental Producciones.