In order to get a dissociative look and feel, we used a Fujifilm camera. The camera brings a color profile that highlights earthy colors, adds bloom, and — with the right lens — gives an eerie perspective. This helped us define a direction for color grading.
Each shot presented its own unique challenge, but the most difficult one was the bottom-up frame of Raskolnikov washing his bloody hands. Since the camera couldn’t get wet, we protected it using a plastic bag. But the bag also trapped heat, so we only had a short window before the camera overheated — making this shot the coolest, but also the most nerve-wracking.
In other scenes, we used gimbals and lots of handheld work to avoid static shots. Depending on the setup, we also used studio lights to adjust the scene lighting outside the mise-en-scène.
Project Info
We shot a short movie for a local literature film festival.
Our team consisted of Grégoire Delwaulle (myself), Tim Rothfuchs, Nikolai Jurotschkin, Nele Busse, each taking on different roles on set and in post-production.
I was mostly involved in storyboarding and realizing the storyboard on set, as well as color grading and cutting.
The short movie tells the story of “Crime and Punishment”, in which a poor student struggles with delusions.
As a result of his strong megalomania, he plans on killing a woman but kills her daughter after being caught in the act.
In our movie, we follow a different route:
Instead of falling into manic, dream-like episodes, the spirits of his victims harass and follow the student.
In a showdown, the spirits directly confront their killer — creating a callback to the title.
Finding the location for Raskolnikov’s chamber was pure luck. During early scouting, we exited a potential location through a narrow hallway — and it had everything we were looking for: tight, grimy, and uncomfortable. Exactly the kind of space our protagonist would live in!
The sink allowed us to revise the storyboard and add an engaging opening scene.
In post-production, we realized that the two victims didn’t quite feel “out of place” — which was good. It was about balancing realism with a ghostly presence, letting the viewer question whether they’re hallucinations. In the chamber, their presence still feels real thanks to the cool and uncomfortable lighting. But once they follow the protagonist into the daylight, the difference becomes more obvious.
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