Many projects have a long journey — the seed of a concept planted, raised, and brought through pre-production, before coming into existence during production.
But some projects pop up out of no-where, and those ones often seem to burst into existence like an unexpected explosion of creative fuel.
Human Hardware (2024) was one of those projects that, apparently, just wanted to exist in the world.
My partner got a message from one of her friends, Tim Sharp, asking if she had a smoke machine or a strobe light — which sounds to me like a recipe for a fun time.
So I said yes, but on the condition that I could come along and see what kind of shenanigans were afoot.
Thus began a frenetic day shooting a sci-fi short packed with projections, smoke, backlighting, reverse-acting, and wind-machines, all filmed on a vintage Bolex 16mm film camera.
Here's a few lessons from the day:
Vintage cameras like to break. With so many moving parts and such fragile film, what did you expect? Give yourself plenty of extra time (and film reels).
Film reels are short. My cinema cameras can now shoot for a couple hours straight to a big hard-drive, so only having a couple minutes per reel seems tiny. The benefit is that you are much more thorough getting your shot 🤣
Paper is heavier than you'd think. Even with my massive wind machine that's strong enough to take your breathe away, regular paper didn't fly around as much as I hoped it would.
As of now while I'm writing this blog post, it's not yet accesible online (as it hits the short film circuits), but you should check out Tim's other work here: timsharp.com.au/work
Until then, I did manage a few quick behind the scenes shots.
