LomoAmigo Sam Bern gives us a tour of his film set

Sam Bern is a young film maker who uses analogue photography to enhance his films. Here he shows us some of his favourite shots, and let’s us sneak a peek behind the scenes on a film set!

Name: Sam Bern
City: London
Country: UK

Tell us a bit about Sam Bern?

I’m a London based film maker. I got my first camera in 2009 and have fallen in love with film photography. I recently started processing my own film in the bath. Hopefully I’ll be setting up a dark room over the next few months. So basically I’m a big geek.

this was the first production meeting on Dead Cat.As it was a special event we took a commemorative Instax shot.
Minolta xg1 50mm 1.7, Kodak Tri-X 400. Taken during a camera test for the Cannon 5D (we ended up shooting on the RED camera). It shows the actors Tom Mison and Seb Armesto.

How long have you been into Lomography or are you new to this whole thing?
When I took these photos I was pretty new. Now I guess I’ve been doing it for nearly two years. I started in march 2009

holga, ilford hp5 400. Our two producers heading out of the office to a meeting. This is our car park.
Minolta XG1 50mm 1.7 Expired (think it was about 4-5 years) Kodak portra 800. This was the Dead Cat we used during the film (don’t worry it was a taxidermy)

What’s the film about?
Dead Cat is a romantic comedy. It was written by me and my writing partner Stefan Georgiou produced by Ben Hilton and Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly. I like to say it’s a “second chance at a first love” but no one else involved in the film likes me saying that. But to me the film is about London, Friendship, dealing with parents, being a parent, creativity and love. You can read more about the film and how we made it on our website

Holga Double exposure of Fuji Colour 400. It’s under a bridge on the south bank with a location shot from Dead Cat over the top ben and the table are the double exposure
Minolta XG1 50mm 1.7 Expired Kodak Color 200. Our leads Seb Armesto and Sophia Dawnay.

Why is analogue photography so important in the film?
Fodhla, our producer, bought a Fuji Instax camera a few years ago and we all fell in love with it, eventually we’d all bought one. We’d worked with digital video and photos for so long that to suddenly have these analogue photos was so refreshing. Stef and Ben are more used to film, but I’d never owned a camera before.

It made me and Stefan think about the difference between a moment you want to capture digitally and one you want to capture on film. Instant photos have a permemance they only ever exist physically as something you hold. So they have this private intimacy, something that you can’t share easily with a thousand people on twitter or facebook, something that when you’ve given to someone you no longer have. So we wrote analogue moments in Dead Cat which involved the Instax, but it would spoil the plot to hear them now!

Minolta XG1 50mm 1.7 Expired Kodak Portra 800. You can really see how grainy it is here I love that.
Minolta XG1 50mm 1.7 Expired Kodak Colour 200. This is me taking a photo of Stef (the director) framing a shot of me for the film.

Which films do you wish you could have photographed the making of?
Apocalypse Now, Mary Ellen Mark took some incredible photos of Marlon Brando on the set. There’s a great one where this dragon fly is balanced on the end of his finger and their both staring at each other. To be honest I’d just like to be Mary Ellen Mark, she did behind the scenes for Fellini, Coppola and has taken some incredible documentary photos. I’ve read that her favourite black and white film is Tri-X 400. Which is also mine. Other then that I don’t come close to being at her level.

Vivitar Ultra thin and slim, Expired Kodak Color 200. JC our DOP moving Sophia our lead actress while we shoot on the shore of the Thames.
Vivitar Ultra thin and slim Expired Kodak color 200. Again on the Thames. This shot shows what a small crew we were.

When is your film coming out?
When they let us! We’re an independent feature film, so we don’t have much money and it means things take longer. We’ve recently got investment from a large post production house based here in London which hopefully means the film will be finished by the end of Summer. Following that we’ll be at festivals and meeting distributors. We’ve been lucky to have incredibly talented and commited people working on the film and we want to make sure as many people get to see their work as possible

written by littlemisslove on 2011-03-14 #people #film #london #uk #lgs #lomoamigo #sam-bern

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