Clear Skies is a short film about two film students who quickly connect over their love of the night sky and decide to make a movie about it. As the production continues and their relationship develops, they realise their differences might be too much to keep everything together.
This film was made for a university assignment and was a major step in my filmmaking career. Having only directed a two-minute student film before this, Clear Skies was an incredibly valuable learning experience, a 19-minute short film with a collection of music videos and other associated edits.
The writing process for this film was challenging but also incredibly fun. As someone who has always enjoyed creative writing, it was a great experience blending it with my love of film.
The ideas I wanted to express were personal: the connection you can have with nature, specifically through the stars. I wanted to use them as a metaphor for authenticity and meaning, contrasting their purity with the evils of the real world.
Tying this with my love of astrophotography was one of my favourite parts of this project, and a theme I’m looking to explore further in future productions.
My good friend Alex Bulsara wrote and performed three fantastic soundtracks for this project. Check out the respective music videos for those songs, each highlighting different parts of the story:
One of my favourite parts of this film was the meta stuff - the film inside the film. The actors had to act as actors doing a press tour for the film that the film was about.
This obviously got quite confusing, but it also led to some golden moments, such as the autocomplete interview. In this, the actors got the chance to have a bit of fun with the material, and our crew (especially Eliza) did a fantastic job with the set and production design.
As part of the assessment, a transmedia component was required, so we also released this autocomplete interview as a separate project to showcase these meta elements of the story.
Check out the Behind the Scenes!
Having the experience I have now, there are many things about this production I would do differently. I approached this project very much as a Director/DP combination, which is incredibly difficult, as it meant that one of these roles would be neglected. As a relatively experienced camera operator, the visual side became a focus of mine, something I naturally fell back on as I became somewhat overwhelmed with the task of directing a project that was bigger than anything I had done before. This unfortunately took away from the skills of my DP - Chris, who did a fantastic job, (accompanying me to something crazy like 15 shoots) and meant that I wasn’t as diligent with my role as a Director.
I can safely say that myself and many others involved worked harder on this project than anything else we’ve ever made, getting lost in the pursuit of perfection that was ultimately not possible. Many cold, late nights in the bush filming, early starts, repetitive takes, all while balancing other uni subjects, work, social lives. It was a pretty hectic time and I won’t forget the commitment that everyone made to this student film.
But at the end of the day, we made a project that we can be proud of. On top of that, this production taught me many incredibly valuable lessons, not just about filmmaking or creating, but about myself and life in general. And that’s why I love this stuff. I can look back and point out all the mistakes I made in this production, but I wouldn’t be able to identify those if I didn’t go through them in the first place.
A big thank you especially to those who stuck by in the editing suites and kept me afloat as I was driving myself insane, people such as Abu and Sevan who weren’t even in the assessment group, but still helped out massively. I truly believe this project was an intrinsic part of my early career and something I will think about for years to come. Many people put a lot of hard work into this project, and I am incredibly grateful for it.
