By Oladapo Bamidele | Follow Oladapo on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
The film is a crime thriller film called The Mason Brothers. It’s basically about a group of career criminals/bank robbers and blood brothers who get set up during a bank heist for ten million dollars. This leads to the death of one of the brothers which sets up the plot line of the film. The other brothers are trying to seek revenge on their brother’s The death. The tone is a very dark style with a lot of overhead lighting and dark shadows as all my films.
How did you develop ‘your film’?
I developed my film by an assortment of ideas from the classic bank heist film from the 1990’s. I wanted to bring back that 1990’s LA bank heist genre that people loved so much from that time period like from Heat, Point Break, LA Confidential.
How was it financed?
Through me and my private investor.
How long was your pre-production?
7 months.
What was your rehearsal process and period?
We rehearsed for about 2 months in LA prior to shooting with the main actors. We made sure all the intense and most difficult scenes were rehearsed and memorized properly.
You shot the film in a few days. How long were your days?
We shot the film in 12 days. 10 of those days were night shoots as the script/story mainly takes places at night. However we shot it over a 3 and a half week period. They were all 12 hours days like most film shoots.
Did the tight shooting schedule make it harder or easier? How did it affect performances?
It was tough but we managed it. All the actors came prepared knowing their lines and were easy to direct because they knew what I wanted based on the rehearsals. The night shoots made it a bit more challenging for the cast/crew but we all handled it well.
What was the experience like of working with such a small shooting crew?
Tough, but I shoot all my films with a smaller crew then the conventional industry standard of tons of crew members for small thing needed on set. I and a lot of the other crew members had to wear many hats on set to get the job done.
The film looks stunning. How did you get such a good look when shooting so fast? Did you look at rushes? On what format?
We didn’t have dailies while shooting. Because of budget, we were required to shoot the film blind. We did have a very bad black-and-white videotape on the camera. And we did do a registration test that we viewed on video before starting principal photography. By the end of the shoot, I had boxes and boxes of film just sitting in my office waiting to turn to vinegar. This is a truly horrible way to shoot a film, for a million reasons. We got very, very lucky.
What were the advantages and disadvantages in the way you worked?
That all came down to my DP Errol Webber. This guy is a expert at his craft. Was the DP on the Oscar Winning film Music by Prudence in 2010 and played a big part in that win.
Did you look at rushes? On what format?
Not so much from what I remember.
What were the advantages and disadvantages in the way you worked?
Maybe I didn’t get every possible type of coverage I wanted but I got enough of what I needed to get the job done. The advantage is we finished the film on time and budget.
Keith Sutliff is from Tampa Florida, a stylistic filmmaker who emphasizes a lot of his work on nonlinear type storytelling and a dark desaturated lighting/color tone. A style he refers to as the “Christopher Nolan style” of filmmaking.
This is Keith Sutliff’s account of the main stages of work on The mason Brothers’, collaborators, cast and crew.
