Mono No Aware is the latest story from the creative minds at Tapped Potential Films, a Calgary-based independent film production company. Director Rino Mioc’s Mono No Aware is a sci-fi drama short film about two lead characters, Claire (Katarina Borsig) and Ezra (Christian Taylor Dobsin), and their connections with each other. Written by Jelayna Arbour, the short film explores the situation when two people are forced to hold back their emotions which ends up being dramatic, very emotional and a little bit funny.
Through Tapped Potential Films along with co-producer Matt Prazak, Mioc initially discovered Arbour’s screenplay through a local competition happening in the city. “We originally watched this on the NUTV (University of Calgary’s campus based television station) screenplay contest where they read the screenplay live and you can see an original rendition…. Matt originally reached out to Jelayna just to let her know that we liked her work, we found her writing to be intriguing and we find her very talented,” says Mioc. “And then of course, we expressed the thought of potentially adapting this screenplay for one because we read it and thought it was something we could take on with little to no money and so then I reached out to her, told her I’m interested, and she was cool with it.”
Mioc, who also shot and edited the film, talks about the process and transforming the script into art. “I read the script that Jelayna wrote, and it gave me crazy Twilight Zone vibes which we talked about. She didn’t see it that way initially, but she said, ‘I love it, do it’ so I went with that,” he says. “On my end as a director, I added a few of my own touches in the screenplay and so you get a project that is ever so slightly different from the script but it’s still very close.”
Mioc’s cinematography which manifested in the visual aesthetic of the film mostly stems from his experiences in the set and when working with Prazak. “With the films that I shot, and Matt directed, they were all kind of in a handheld style and this one kind of borrows a little bit from that except that when we shot it, it wasn’t handheld. It was all on sticks (tripod), and we added that handheld effect in post” he continues. “When I watch Matt direct, I borrow some from him as I’m sure he borrows some of my tech side of things when he goes into his directing and we learn from each other that way,” he adds.
Principal photography took place in an apartment complex in Calgary with one 12-hour production day for most of the scenes and a supplementary production day for pick-up shots. Within the apartment complex, the majority of light sources were natural light from the sun coming through the windows.
Hurdles were encountered in shooting mostly with natural light. “I wanted to shoot the whole thing chronologically but as soon as we got there with the sun and everything, it was not a cloudy day. I was really hoping for a cloudy day, but it wasn’t, so we needed to wait pretty much for the sun to go to the other side of the apartment complex so it’s (light) not blaring into them,” Mioc says. “So, we first shot the internal stuff and then we shot the first scene last where she’s outside so that we had a softer light. A minor hurdle, nothing significant because as soon as we realized that the sun was right in our faces, we just decided that we’re gonna have to just switch up the way we shot that,” he explains.
Mioc’s camera team, which includes First Assistant Camera Sarah Thirkell and Second Assistant Camera Daniel Zappe, were able to capture hours of footage, and served as raw material for the short. “Sarah and Daniel were both wonderful. I like to look at the natural light that’s available in location and just mould the lighting around and the camera assistants both understood that. They nailed it.”
The camera used to shoot the short was a Canon C70, outfitted with Rokinon Cine DS lenses. “They are a kind of lower-end Cinema lenses, but I think they have a nice look especially when you open them up all the way,” he says. “They get a tad soft, and they have this kind of glow around certain edges, which I’ve heard people complain about, but I think it has a nice vintage-y look.”
A Canon C70 was chosen due to the camera’s capabilities of having internal RAW as a recording option. The dual-gain Super35 sensor of the C70 provides sixteen stops of total dynamic range and with the addition of internal RAW options, adds flexibility within the camera files to accommodate Mioc’s vision for the film.
“The choice of the C70, well, I like the internal RAW, it’s a nice feature. On top of that, I work on Vistek and have access to various brands, and I’ve just been trying various different cameras. I’ve tried Sony, Canon, Blackmagic and I’ve decided on the C70 because of the portability of it. It’s the big selling point,” he says. “Canon does have a nice colour profile but ultimately I took away all the colour,” Mioc says as he laughs.
Most of the key scenes involving the main characters were required to be shot in having visual effects added later in post-production in mind. Mioc, who is also the head of the post-production process as editor, adds the VFX-heavy nature of this film to a list of tasks needed to be addressed. “The effects, I wouldn’t say were a hurdle, but they were extremely time consuming,” he says. “70 per cent of the movie has visual effects…. So, very surprisingly a VFX-heavy short film,” he adds.
Borsig (as Claire) and Dobsin (as Ezra) brought a great acting dynamic to Mono No Aware as a couple, Mioc observes. “They got into character right away. We met and they started talking right away about their vision for their characters and it pretty much matched up exactly what I was feeling.”
“We got together the day before the shoot for about four hours and we rehearsed the entire movie without camera and we just wanted to get their placements and get them fighting with each other,” he says. “So, without that pre-production, maybe the chemistry wouldn’t have been there right away. But because we did that first, as soon as they’re paired on-screen, they’ve already gotten to know each other so I think pre-productions are important,” Mioc notes.
For more information about the short film release of Mono No Aware, please click here.