UNUS: A Fashion Film

The initial concept for the film came from three sources. First and foremost, I stumbled upon a fashion film for River Island by Ryan Hope. I was blown away by the finesse and artistic value of the project, but it was really the one-take style that stood out for me. I was adamant that I must create a one-take project someway, somehow. Secondly, in my Film Studies class at King’s College London I was studying with twin sisters Manuela and Elena Lazic who were also model. Now a few weeks into term I luckily managed to meet another set of twins but from Brazil who go by the names Isabella and Francesca Gullo. While they are not signed models, they had been featured in a few magazines in Brazil and I definitely thought they had the right look. Thirdly, I thought if I was able to combine the one-take cinematography with two sets of twins styled as one person each, we could fool the audience for the majority of the film by never showing them both within the same shot. I also thought that the lack of cuts would allow us to build tension and anticipation.

I then managed to meet up with two fashion designers; Elizabeth Divine who offered me the dresses, Neco London who offered himself as an actor and brought his designs to the shoot. The main issues we had on the day of shooting were logistics and preparation. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we could not do a proper run through with the entire cast until the day of shoot. In fact, the camera was only rolling for 5 takes. The first two were the run throughs and the last three were the real thing. We were never going to get a 100% technically perfect take and as we were running against the clock, and with cast + crew getting tired we settled for a 70% perfect take.

While it is a one take, I estimate that as a team we spent around 60 solid hours in editing. The most time consuming part of the edit were the speed ramps which took the running time down from twelve minutes to eight. These sped up segments allowed me to change the colour grade of the next scene without it becoming too obvious.Overall, I can firmly say that doing a one-take production is extremely hard and post-production will be time consuming. But attempting to do a one take with next to no rehearsals, no follow focus and a variety of environments that constantly affect the exposure is near unfeasible.

Words by Efosa Osaghae

To see more of Efosa’s work visit his website.

Film Credits:

Model: Elena Lazic

Model: Manuela Lazic

Model: Francesca Gullo

Model: Isabella Gullo

Model:Neco London

Model: Bobbie Mitchell

Director / Producer — Efosa Osaghae efosaosaghae.com

Exec Producer — Shola Dada-Sholanke

Cinematographer — Dijian Eccles dmndclr.com

Cam Operator — Eyyaz Chishty

AD #1 — Daniel Ambor

AD #2 — Michael Rodrigues

Editor — Dijian Eccles, Efosa Osaghae, Carlos Nieto

Sound — Daniel James danieljamesmusicservices.com

Vocals — Maddy Day

Costume — Oyinkansola Dada

Still Photographer — Miguel Rodriguez

Runner — Mingling Chen

Shot at Cre8 Studios.

Originally published at www.papercutmag.com on January 31, 2016.