From The Thunder
When three allied troops stumble upon a lone German deserter, when seeking shelter from the impending storm, their sense of morality is tested against their sense of duty.
Produced by
True Perspective films
Director
Daniel Everitt-Lock
Cinematographer
Daniel Everitt-Lock
Writer
Sean Meldrum
Score by
Felipe Tellez
Starring
Sean Meldrum
Jacob Hogan
Alexander Oliver
Neil Paterson
Producer
Daniel Everitt-lock
Sean meldrum
gaffer
Douglas cunningham
key grip
dallas suess
production designer
Nina gheysens
1st ac
carl Paulo Oliveros
shot on Alexa mini
with cooke sf's
Behind the Scenes Video
Trailer
behind the secenes
Director's Statement
"The idea behind the piece, for me, was to show the internal suffering of soldiers from all sides of the war, allied and opposing. The deep internal conflict of duty versus morality on a personal scale within a world war. I wanted to show how trauma is dealt with in many different ways. Some may fight hard against it and push on as a coping mechanism, ignoring their emotions, while others may see no alternative way out other than to end it all. Two extremes obviously, but what more interesting way to tell a story?"
"My aim here was not to glorify the allied side, nor the opposing side, but to show all the soldiers as human beings. Clearly there is a bias towards the allied side when watching war pieces so it was important for me to try and create a sense of our German soldier not being 'the bad guy'. For instance, we tried to match similar framing for both the German and injured allied soldier during the trauma sequences, and we share a similar top shot of them both at the start of the film."
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"I tried to incorporate religious undertones within the film without trying to shout too much about it. The opening of the piece where we raise up over our German soldier, was to try and symbolize the idea of him floating up to heaven, while we reverse match this with the next shot on our allied soldier as we come back down to earth with him. I also loved the use of the high shots for our own 'God perspective' from up above, looking down on our soldiers.
Our flares only on the German soldier were meant to play to the idea of Jesus sacrificing himself at the cross, often depicted with god rays and shining light in many religious art works."
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"For the visual style, I wanted a combination of artistic, but also commercially appealing. This led us to go with the Arri Alexa Mini and Cooke Special Flares. The colour science of the Alexa is perfect for that filmic feel, but still with the flexibility of digital. The mini was the obvious choice with our need for handheld sequences within the piece. The Cooke Special Flares were chosen to lean into a slightly different look than a traditional war film. Realistically, these kind of lenses lend themselves more to a scifi style piece with their very distinct and prominent flares, but I wanted to make use of this for our flaring idea with our German soldier. I felt this worked superbly well with the opening shot of the piece. "
"Myself and writer Sean Meldrum intentionally kept the dialogue to an absolute minimum to allow our score to be the driving force behind the emotional beats, enhancing our actors performance. We were very lucky to have our score composed by Felipe Tellez and recorded live with his string quartet."
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"If you finish the piece with a tonne of questions, then you are on the right track! My aim with this was not to leave the audience with all the answers, but to leave some room to create your own interpretation of what was going on in our soldiers heads. The main purpose of our final sequence, all in POV between our two soldiers with no dialogue, was to put the audience into the actors shoes. See behind the eyes and find what happened. I have my own interpretation, but love hearing what others come up with."
