James McVitty - DP & Colourist

Roles: Director of Photography, Colour Supervisor, VFX

Premiered 2022

Short Film

Shay, a film lab technicion, begins to suspect a client is displaying predatory behaviour in his photography.

Partly shot on 16mm film, Negatives is a tribute to film photography’s resurgence, centering on themes of subjectivity, voyeurism and emotional catharsis.

Since the story's conception, we knew we wanted to utilise both analogue and digital capture formats to tell the two stories which thread through the film's narrative.

The contrast between shooting the present-day scenes on the ARRI Amira with sharp lenses, and the memory scenes on grainy 16mm celluloid, creates a relationship between subjective recollection and the objectivity of reality.

Negatives aims to explore the way that the passage of time can cause our recollection of past events to skew further and further into subjectivity, and therefore colour the way we might perceive more current events which are reminiscent of those long past.

Throughout the film, Shay's experiences at work remind her of traumatic personal experiences, and these memories are presented through single, uninterrupted shots, and in a black and white 16mm celluloid format. This approach creates a feeling of isolation and abstraction, reflecting how time and trauma responses can augment the way we recall the past.

Starring Jana Zvedeniuk, Sebastian Lamour, Mark Raffety

Director: Thomas Broadbent

Screenplay: Thomas Broadbent, Teagan Harris

Producer: Claudine Ocampo

Executive Producer: Edward Broadbent, P. Rees, William Broadbent

Director of Photography: James McVitty

Editor: Teagan Harris

Production Designer: Ruby Strachan

Sound Designer: Callum Thomas

Original Score by: Jordan Ollington

First Assistant Director: Ethan McDonald, Maggie Brittingham

First Assistant Camera: Daniel Tritt, Teagan Harris

Second Assistant Camera: David Butler

Gaffer: Macson Dimovski

Best Person: Andrew Modra

Grips: Pietro Tomarchio, Daniel Tritt

Sound Recordist & MIxer: Callum Thomas

Boom Operator: Blair Stellato

Script Supervisor: Teagan Harris

Set Dresser: Verity Adams, Fatima El Hassan

Colour by: Crayon (Daniel Stonehouse)

Visual Effects: Teagan Harris, James McVitty, Thomas Broadbent

Title Design: Matt Temby

BTS: Camille Chapman, James Griffiths, Connor Uniacke, Claudine Ocampo

Covid Safety Officer: Nick Hales

I would like to acknowledge the people of Woiwurrung, who are the Traditional Owners of the land on which this project was produced, and to pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. This was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.

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