This DP's Secrets to a Making Stunning Short Film

Making a short film is a unique challenge—you have a limited amount of time to tell your story, and often even more limited budgets. You're also likely competing with other filmmakers in a very crowded field. With the advent of affordable camera equipment, editing software, and distribution methods, more creatives than ever before are able to make and distribute short films. More films being made and released every day, making it harder for individual filmmakers to shine.

However, filmmakers can stand out from the crowd by developing their visuals. Strong cinematography and lighting can help elevate a short film, grabbing viewers' attention instantly.

That's certainly the case of "Ministry of Loneliness", a moody short about bureaucrats working in an office that distributes aid and advice to lonely constituents. The DP responsible for the look of the film was Jackie Fang, a Chinese cinematographer based in Los Angeles who drew inspiration from classic film and used color to show the characters' changing emotional journey.

We spoke with Fang via email about her work on the short. She shares her lighting and camera setups and offers advice to beginning DPs. Enjoy!

"Ministry of Loneliness" screens at the LA Shorts International Film Festival on July 26.

Ministry of Loneliness Provided

No Film School: Please share a bit about how you got into cinematography.

Jackie Fang: I think my early childhood experience set a base for my cinematography career. I grew up in a country where color contains a lot of metaphorical meanings. As a kid, we moved around a lot, and I became very adaptive to new environments. We’ve lived in different apartments in the city I grew up in, and eventually moved to Beijing. I remember telling my mom when I was very little that I wanted all warm lighting for our apartment no matter where we moved to, because that’s what I felt was “home.”

When I moved to San Francisco for undergrad at the age of 18, I didn’t know anything about the arts. Dark room photography was my first introduction to the visual arts. What fascinated me more was actually the process. It was really like magic when you see your photograph appear slowly as you agitate it in the tray of chemicals, because that was the first time one can actually see the photo after it has been taken and processed. There was certainly lots of excitement, as well as some fear.

Later I practiced sculpture for a year. I love the way that it trained you to really think about perspective. Where do you place the object is to direct the viewers’ eyes to see or not see certain things, to have people come and observe closely or keep them at a distance.

I appreciated the craftsmanship in both photography and sculpture, but I didn’t feel like either of them could express my voice fully. I was in my early 20s, in a foreign country alone, curious about the world while trying to figure out “Who am I?” I felt there was this undercurrent in me that needed to flow. It was stuck until I first operated a cinema camera.

Looking through the viewfinder while moving the camera, I felt an invisible connection between me and the camera, and when others were watching the footage I shot, they had different interpretations as well. I fell in love with the openness and possibilities cinematography can bring, just like when you look at a photograph, at the same time, just like sculpture, you can direct the audience to look at what you want or not want them to. And that’s when I decided to pursue cinematography.

NFS: What was your process as you developed the visuals of Ministry of Loneliness?

Ministry of Loneliness was my second collaboration with director Randa Ali. So we were already in tune with a lot of creative side of things. It took about three months from concept to finish. During pre-production, Randa and I had numerous meetings to find references and inspirations to develop a unique visual language for the film. We drew inspiration from Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors: Blue, as well as the Apple TV series Severance.

Unlike our last collaboration—Kingdom of Strangers, which was filmed all exterior using only natural daylight—Ministry of Loneliness was filmed on a soundstage where we were in a controllable space, but also means that everything needed to be designed and placed purposefully.

Randa, the production designer Marie, and I worked closely on the color palette for the film because we wanted to use color to help convey emotions. So we decided to use blue for the main office space to set a lonely and nostalgic tone where we see each of them by their desks and separated from each other. We only introduced warmth once we saw them move to the break room area where they were together, because it is a space for reconnecting with each other. The contrast of the cool and warm color worked very nicely in showing the progression of the story and the transformation of the characters.

Jackie Fang and crew behind the scenes of Ministry of Loneliness Provided

NFS: What did you use to shoot the project?

Fang: I used two ARRI Alexa Classic with a set of Cooke Panchro Classic lenses.

For me, what was special technically was the lens I chose. I had a limited budget which meant I often had to make a decision between having one thing and not having the other thing in my camera and lighting package.

Because visuals played a huge part in the storytelling for this film, we wanted the look of the film to stand out and make people feel the melancholic emotions. I chose to use the Cooke Panchro Classic lens. It is a vintage set of lenses. Not only does it have the classic creamy and soft look like all other Cooke lenses, but is also very balanced and true to the real colors that we perceive in reality, as it became one of the most important tools we had for visual storytelling.

NFS: What were some of your lighting set-ups on the short?

Fang: We filmed in a soundstage that has two approximately 20x20’ green beds above, but there were no rigging points in the middle which is where the set was. So we ended up building two grids and rigged eight 12’ quasar bi-color tubes at 5000k, which serve as a general office ambiance, especially for the two power surge scenes.

We also rigged a couple of office lamps as practicals with daylight balanced bulbs also used to key the actors from time to time. Additionally, I had a Litemat 2L on a stand to key or fill if needed.

And for the breakroom scenes, I had two source 4 750w gelled with sodium vapor gels angling down almost dialogically. One of them had a 2x3 prison bar frame in front of it to mimic a window.

NFS: What advice do you have for aspiring DPs?

Fang: My advice for aspiring DPs is to always stay curious and have no fear to challenge and to be challenged. I think that curiosity is one of the best traits one can carry from childhood, and it is what sparks creativity in the first place. And to learn all the rules in cinematography because one can only break the rules after knowing them. We all have an ego, and it can blind us sometimes, but a good cinematographer’s job is to see and let others see, so when we are challenged by other creatives, we need to learn to accept and embrace the differences because that is what keeps filmmaking alive.