Kaya - Flying Into The Sun
An artist gives himself completely to the industry.
CREW
Director - Jesse Samos Leaman
Producer - Marc Vecchio
Cinematographer - Nyssa Mitchell
1st AD - Nicole Freeman
Production Design - Nina Pejcic
Gaffer - Nick Smith
1st AC - Angela Basile
Editor - Jesse Samos Leaman
Best Boy - Noah O'Brien Heimann
Prod Assist - Sabrina Xiang
SFX Makeup - Alexandra Cox
Assistant Producer - Sarah Pierce
Intimacy Coordinator - Amy Cater
Stills Photographer - Oliwier Gesla
Colourist - Sam McCarthy CSI
VFX Artist - Joshua Hoole
CAST
The Artist - Kaya Byrne The Journalist - Pia O'Meadhra Manager - Marlon Kilbey Publicist - Tadashi Nakase Photographer - Peter Foster Agent - Elle White Writer - Jo Alexander Talent Scout - Karen S Yee Reporter - Jesse Dass Assistant #1 - Christiana Brothers Assistant #2 - Adriani Vasilakis Photo Assistant - Yuan Lu Dancer - Eray Mertturk PR Assistant - Hao Dao
Building the world for Kaya.
I wanted a location the felt overwhealmingly large. Somewhere Kaya could feel isolated inside. It’s that feeling of, when the party is over who do you have? - He is this artist that with great success he has had to sell ever part of himself, being ripped apart (literally in this case) and that hollow feeling once you give all yourself to this “industry”.
Now, for my projects, I like to write all my concepts in script form, we are telling narratives. And those need substance, not just images. I find that the script is the truest way to know if the story is coming through. Then we can talk about pretty pictures.
With this project in particular, I wanted to give the characters all dialogue and scenes to run off, so that they felt they had some motivation to roll with. The audio was not to be officially used, and in fact, we were not running audio on the day, but our PHOTOSHOOT scene improv felt so good, I actually threw down my phone on the floor in the room to catch some of that on day audio that actually made it into the final cut of the film clip. Adapting and being flexible to choices like this will be helpful in the editing room to help motivate the flow of the edit.
It seems to have become a theme that I often bring many of my shoots back to my hometown in Geelong. It has been the running secret, and if you're reading this. There you go, the secret is out now. You know. That’s where all my gem locations are. This Members' only Club had a plethora of rooms, it was difficult to chose where to shoot, after a recce with Nyssa (DOP we had to cull down my unreasonable list to the scenes you see in the final clip. Directing is as much about finding where you are willing to sacrifice, and its knowing what elements you want in your clip or films that actually strengthen and push the narrative forward, and what is just ‘eye candy’. Learn that difference. Pretty images can be made with a click of a button, and the story stands out.
