Valgas Moore, currently living in the south west of England, started media 4 years ago, mainly focusing on photography as a GCSE.  After school he was split on what to do, so without much thought he chose to attend a two year moving image course at City of Bath College. It turned out to be a really great experience, which made him want to focus on film making as a career.

“The buzz word on set of What a Witch was “mysterious”, and this was true for every aspect of this production. I was never fully sure who would actually turn up on the day, or how we would shoot a professional film with mainly non-professionals. I was excited, nervous, anxious to start, but also unsure of what to think of the other people there, or what they thought of me. Luckily, all my worries and uneasiness were quashed with a great introduction and tour around the location by Boris Seewald. After this, the atmosphere calmed. I think we all felt like we wanted to give everything and learn a lot on this production. The shoot started at 6am, the earliest I’ve ever been on any set, but spirits were high and we got to work well. During filming, I was given a lot of trust and responsibility, I always felt like a valued member of the crew. Michael Franklin and Boris Seewald made sure everybody knew what they were doing, and the whole production ran smoothly into the next day, we took the last shot at about 2am, the latest I’ve ever been on set. Overall, when I look back on the project, I have only fond memories. I was able to keep focused on the film, but not miss out on general laughs while the camera was off. A perfect production with perfect people, lots of thanks to Michael and Boris for organizing it all.

My job on set was Focus puller/1st camera assistant. That consists of setting up where the camera should be and go in every shot, and keeping all subject matter in focus. It all sounds pretty straight forward, but there was a lot more to it on this film. We were shooting on a Canon XL1, a standard broadcast quality digital camera, no problems there. The difficulty came with the lenses, we were using the kit canon lens, but on top of that, we added an adapter so to use 35mm lenses. This made my job a lot harder. The depth of field while using this set up is vastly shallower then if we used the kit lens alone. So it meant I had to be very careful not to go swinging in and out of focus. With all that in mind, put the lens on a tracking and panning camera and the result is a few more takes then I’m used to. Overall though, the cinematography because of this was to a far higher standard than your average no-budget film.”

Other Filmprojects:

Memories (2007)

Tiredness Can Kill (2008)

My Reality (2008)

Gambia fund raising documentary for ITV West Local

Photographer for events:

The Mayer of bath

All college out reach and promotional events, showcases, open days etc.

Youth Summer Camps

Valgas Moore on FlickR:

www.flickr.com/vmmoore

Tags: Focus Puller, Valgas Moore, What a Witch

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