In 2025, Director Brandon Swartz asked me on as Director of Photography for his Short Film, A Breath Between Us, a poetic, VFX-leaning short that balanced tender human moments with unsettling supernatural beats.
From the beginning I pushed for a “practical-first, digital polish” workflow: designing lighting that read beautifully in camera and would also give the VFX team usable plates to composite against. We shot primarily on Blackmagic cinema bodies alongside a Canon R5 B-cam, and I built a look that drew on classical painting references (Ophelia, Flaming June) while maintaining clinical clarity for make-up and compositing work. A big part of my job was pre-production VFX planning — mapping clean plates, marking eyelines, and coordinating with SFX so post could realize the fire, decay, and subtle removals we needed.
On set I led camera and lighting, organized coverage to protect the editor, and helped manage continuity for Reilly’s makeup progression so the SFX and editorial team had reliable matching material. We leaned on practical effects where safe, tested “fire bubble” techniques, and captured extra high-speed reference for compositing. In post I am currently working to provide VFX notes, raw plates, and work closely with color to lock a filmic, slightly analog grade. The project required balancing intimacy with technical rigor — an approach that’s become central to how I run a set.
The film has just recently entered post-production, and these stills are unfinished. They do not reflect the final product of the film, and are unedited from the raw footage out-of-camera.