My experience working as Director of Photography on the short film Hammered Directed By Luke Frewin.

In January 2025 I was asked to be the director of photography for Luke Frewin's latest short film Hammered. Luke Frewin is a short film director and screenwriter from Oxfordshire. The premise of this short film is that a controversial football content creator by name the name of Ryan (played by Luke Frewin himself) is confronted by two violent followers who disagree with Ryan's latest football tweet in his own home. While this seems to be a tense situation that soon spirals into violent conflict. Ryan seems to be completely unphased by the confrontation and just lets his beating happen despite no care in the world. The interesting part of this is that this film seems to comment on the common occurrence that followers will turn on Social media creators at the turn of a dime, even going so far as to be canceling them for saying the silliest things that really don't mean much.

While I haven't seen the final finished short film yet. I am going to talk about my experience during the making of Hammered.

The planning stage

Before getting started on the actual shooting days. It was important that I had meetings with Director Luke Frewin. This was important as the most important discussions came from what comes before the shooting days. As a director of photography for this short film, I needed to discuss the visual style of this film so that myself and Luke Frewin had a clear idea on how we wanted this film to look. We came up with the idea that we wanted this film to have a sort of tense and formal visual style where the characters are placed uncomfortably in frame and squashed together. But we also wanted there to be shots that were open and wide, capturing the whole set in frame.

As we only had two days worth of filming dates booked in, to achieve the visual style we set out for, we had to get creative. What I mean by this is we had to think outside the box on certain shots. For example the action scene would have been incredibly difficult to shoot in such a short duration of time. To get around this we had to think of shots like point of view shots you would see in Peep show or a static shot recorded from the laptop webcam. Not only did these shots save time but they would add artistic value if pulled off correctly.

After multiple meetings, idea generation sessions and run through's of the script. Me and Luke were able to come up with a shot list that would help guide us during the filming stage. It was now time to take these ideas and work them on the days of shooting.

Day One

January 11th 2025. Waking up at the crack of dawn to get to a set that is 1 hour drive away from home in Nottingham. Equipment I had packed for the day was my Sony A7III, Manfrotto Tripod, Manfrotto Monopod, External Rode camera Microphone, A Lens kit with various sizes of lenses. Spare memory cards and batteries. There was also more camera equipment provided by other members of the film crew. The real challenge is making use of what you have with and what you can be provided with. It has to be a fast learning curve to learn all the equipment you have in front of you because you do not want to slow the day down or get something wrong.

Now on arrival, you will always feel a slight sense of dread, but also a sense of excitement. You're about to make art, what could go wrong? Day one is always the awkward day. You're likely to be working with people you've never met before. While this was not the case for me this time as the crew I was working with was part of my personal network. I noticed for my assistant Ciro, It was hard for him at first as he had to find a way to break the ice with the rest of the crew. This is just one challenge most people will find on film sets. I've experienced it, you likely will to if being on film sets is something you are looking to do, but once you get past that part, its all about having fun and bonding with the rest of the crew.

Scene One

The first scene to shoot was actually the first scene of the film. We started with a scene that is centered around a conversation at Ryan's front door of his house. This was not the most difficult scene of the weekend. We shot this first as this was the only scene that required natural day light. Being we shot this short film in January, we had the short daylight days against us. We had to shoot this scene as efficiently and quickly as possible. This scene overall did not really have any major issues. In fact, filming this scene went rather smoothly. However, we did have interference from passing traffic on the street we were filming on. With our budget, we couldn't do anything about this and we did have a few nosy passerby's who wanted to see what we were doing. We felt like celebrities or big time filmmakers. It's incredible how many people make you feel like they have never seen a camera before when they pass people making films publicly.

Scene two

Scene two's premise was the confrontation of Ryan's followers. This was an interrogation scene. This scene was a little more difficult to film as we had limited space to set up in. I knew this scene would require heavy use of the wide angle lens as we needed to frame the room so that it looked large inside. To shoot this scene I would film from corners with the wide angle lens, getting that tense feeling for the edit. With each shot I would gradually push the camera in a few steps so that each shot of the scene would gradually show a form of claustrophobia for Ryan as a character.

Overall this scene was shot pretty smoothly, however we did run into the issue that with the the darker days, during the filming of the scene we ran out of daylight really quickly. This meant that half of the scene became unusable as we the lighting coming through the windows was not consistent, This mean we had to shoot half the scene again on day two to fix this issue.

Another issue we had was that the scene included a two minute long monologue from one of the characters. This monologue had to be filmed entirely in a single shot. This led to mistakes happening and took a while to perfect. This was no cause of effect from the cameras or director though as we had to rely on the actor (Sebastian France) skills. Seb was great though and eventually nailed his performance, I admired the ability to remember his monologue.

The final issue we came across was no fault of our own. This issue was that the landlord we had paid to use their apartment for two days had accidentally double booked which meant that we had an issue with a second party of people being in the house with us at the same time, delaying an entire scene. This was eventually resolved however and business continued as usual. Perfect time to take a break though while the situation was resolved.

As a director of photography your goal is to direct the camera's. In a way, you're just as important as the director and producer on set. With out clear direction from someone who is trained in their knowledge of camera's, mistakes and lack of visualization will be achieved. What I liked working with Luke was the trust to come up with a visual style. Some directors like to be behind the glass of the camera at all times. While I understand this as obviously directors want to make sure the visual style matches their vision, it is nice to be left to make the decisions on how a film will look visually. It helps to have an assistant who can be in control of a second camera if you are using more than one camera for a scene. If you have access to an external monitor, this can also be handy to as you will have a clearer preview of what you are shooting. Unfortunately, I did not have an external monitor for this short film. I wanted to pack lightly as this was only a two day shoot and we had little time. Sometimes, less is more and my camera's monitor was fine for a film shot mostly with one camera.

Day two

Scene 3

The final scene of the weekend. This scene was also the final scene of the short film. a scene that involves Ryan sat watching TV in the evening with a bag of frozen peas pressed against his face and his friend who comes home from work to find a beaten up Ryan. While I won't go into detail about this scene as I do not want to spoil the entirety of the film as you should watch it for yourself, I will talk about the experience of shooting this scene.

As this was the final scene of the film and we were coming to the end of a busy two day shoot. I think in general the cast and crew were starting to feel the toll of the weekend. The final scene we were working with a new actress who had joined us towards the end of the shoot. She was amazing to work with, very friendly and she knocked it out of the park with her lines. The Crew had really bonded at this point and it felt like we had all really jelled our skills together, It was nice to see how much the crew mixed. This is what I call peak film making because at this time you have made something great and you are having fun at the same time, whilst making friends and connections. There is so much responsibility on a film set and honestly being a Director of Photography can be extremely stressful, metaphorically you are one of the legs of a tripod and a tripod can't stand up if one leg falls down. But when everyone on set is having a great time and their is no issues, this shows that you have done your job and the tripod is stable.

I think overall shooting this scene went pretty well. After an hour break to refresh, eat, get to know the new actress. We just got straight to filming. I think the biggest issue we had during filming this scene was just feeling tired and dreading the hour drive we still had to do after filming. This is just film making in general though. You have to expect that film making is often alot of long shooting days and it is a lot of hard work. Your position in film making is not given but it is earned. Film making is an experience game and whilst I don't see myself as a professional in the film making business as I do not do this as a full time job. I do think my experience and knowledge working with camera equipment in past projects really supported my ability to be in control of the visual style of the film.

To end this blog I will talk about my general thoughts about the weekend. This was a really fun weekend that while busy and tiring, did not feel like work at all. It was great to catch up with some friends of mine that I hadn't seen in person since I left Worcester city in 2021. I think that was the most interesting part of the weekend as it's been 5 years since I graduated from university and we have all grown as people, were adults now with full time jobs and responsibilities, and to meet up and just hangout with old friends, forget about the real world and also make new friends for a few days was really awesome. I think this weekend shoot had a few minor hiccups but nothing that could have massively sabotaged the entire films production. I think it comes down to the fact that the film went through pre-planning and production which is a massive help because everybody was prepared. It was interesting as when I think back to my time at university and how inexperienced I was back then compared to the experience me and the fellow crew all brought to the table during the weekend was amazing. This was a really special weekend and I can't wait to watch the final cut of the short film.

Hope you enjoyed reading this blog

Sam