Tom Edkins, makes films that are exciting, playful, and heartfelt. His recent short film, ‘Pistachio’, is about an evangelical father who sends his two children door to door, trying to sell their faith to an unwilling community, until an encounter with an isolated farmer brings new perspective to all four lives.

 

Tom Edkins

We shot Pistachio on the stark, bleakly beautiful flats of Romney Marsh in Kent. It doesn’t really feel like the English countryside – more like the American Midwest in some places – so we used extreme wide angles and exaggerated perspectives to capture the otherworldly scale and isolation of the setting. I took a lot of inspiration from the way Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are shot.

 

 

The Kodak Portra film stock was ideal for our palette as it gives a cool, almost bleached look to the pastoral greens and blues while letting earthy browns and muted reds show through – perfect for capturing the contrast between the harsh, unforgiving outside world and the domestic warmth of the farmer’s house.

 

 

I use FilmConvert in Premiere and DaVinci Resolve, using it as a base layer before adding my own custom tweaks. I’ve used it on everything from Arri Alexa to iPhone footage: whether I’m using it to give an instant lift or as inspiration for a more in-depth grade it’s the tool I reach for first.

Considering how many people are charging £50 for garbage LUT packs out there, paying £200 for something of genuine quality that I use every day was a no-brainer.

I’m a director but I got into filmmaking through photography and I used to paint and draw, so I don’t like taking my hands off the camera – I want to be involved in the images. Having something as flexible as FilmConvert – it can play as big or small a role in a project as I need – means I can get everything I want from the camera even on projects where the budget won’t stretch to a colourist.