Filmmaker Andrew Sykes has been shooting film for several years. Like many budding directors, he started experimenting as early as during his school years.

Post his studies and after realisation that he wouldn't end up be an engineer as originally planed, Andrew began to find himself returning back to filmmaking. His first love.

He says the support and motivation from his grandfather helped turn dreams into realisations and assisted him into getting into the film industry.

Andrew considers himself part of the new breed of cinematographers, specifically embracing the HD-DSLR format for film-making.

He states he always remains "practically minded, motivated and passionate about film".

‘Trainspotting’ stated life as a title. We wanted to write/shoot and edit a short in four hours using ‘Trainspotting’ as the inspiration. The short could in no way be reminiscent of the existing film of the same name. Between myself and the crew we came up with various ideas but settled on the story of a recently single man whose wife died a few weeks ago. He would visit the train station to pick her up regularly so after her death he revisited the station frequently, waiting for her to return. He then meets a young woman who reminds him of his wife when they first met, the relationship between these two strangers starts from here in.

The crew on this short was made up of a sound recordist and DoP/Director – me. As the short was an improvised shoot, I also had a writer to help develop a short story in an hour before the shoot would start. My first short film that I directed had a much bigger crew, the size of which really depends on where you are shooting and the nature of the project. The cast was Allan O’Keefe (Z Cars, EastEnders) and Leanne

Rowley who were fantastic and did a great job in the short time we had to shoot.

In many ways the greatest outcome was that I learnt a lot from shooting it. It was the first time I had shot on HD-DSLR and this presented many challenges. HD-DSLR is a game changing format that will turn the film world upside down, especially for indie filmmakers. The style of shooting on these cameras is very different from that of shooting on a Sony Z1/EX3 for example. The benefits are that you can get very shallow depths of field and beautiful low light images. However the disadvantages are that the cameras were simply not designed for this usage as they are stills cameras.

The wind and train station noise was not all that friendly to the mics and so we had to be creative about where we would record the dialogue. Stability of the camera was another issue, which can only be corrected by investing in a full camera support rig, which I would recommend doing to anybody wanting to get smooth clean images. I have since invested in a rig after not having one on this project. The shaky camera really distracts from the tender moments in the story. The single biggest problem was though when we had to switch locations. Allan, had to go back to his car and top up the parking metre and this was two minutes away from the next location, so whilst he did that we planned to set up the next shots. However after fifteen minutes it started to worry us as to where he was. Twenty, thirty, forty and fifty minutes went by all before we caught site of Allen. Turns out he had taken a wrong turn and gotten stuck in the one way system. We had lost an hour and only had about half an hour to get the shots we wanted. The pressure was on but we got through in the end.

I am rather influenced by South Korean cinema. The first Korean film that I saw was ‘Il Mare’, directed by Hyun-seung Lee. It was the film that the American movie ‘The Lake House’ was based on. I fell in love with the texture and colours, which felt linked with the characters emotions. The main genre in South Korea is the romantic comedy, not something that would normally appeal to me but they seem to pull It off very well in an addictive quirky manner. From this I went on to explore more films including the fantastic ‘I’m a cyborg but that’s ok’. This influence gives my films a different look, one that has been described as ‘warm and intimate’. I frequently use close up shots as I feel it helps to really get inside the characters emotions, I love films that are character driven and there is a lot you can do with just a handful of well written characters.

I have a feature film being written in Singapore at the moment which is especially exciting as it is based on a short that I made a couple years ago. The main project at the moment however is a thriller web series entitled ‘Red Room’ that will be going into pre-production in a few weeks. We will be shooting on HD-DSLR.

Advice?…Well for me you have to just get out and create. I started shooting shorts when I was in secondary school, using a cheap DV camera, and from there got my work screened at a couple of festivals, and then my first paid music video. The most important thing is to keep on writing, filming and making mistakes in the field

and learning from them. To succeed in this industry you need to be so passionate about what you do, read up on other directors, DoP’s and filmmakers and develop your own style in the way you shoot. If anyone is looking for a DoP for their next short film and would like to shoot on HD-DSLR get in touch!

Many thanks to Andrew for taking the time to speak to us!

For more info and to follow Andrew's regular blog: www.andrewjsykes.co.uk