Joaquin Manzaneda AFP

Auteur Film Project May 2024: Here Without You 

Logline: A young man visits the places he used to go to with his recently deceased best friend. 

Synopsis: Its been a year since Chris passed away. Jason flips through pictures of him and Chris and experiences flashbacks to Chris' death. He decides to visit his old hangout spots and he remembers fondly his times spent with his best friend. Later on he visits Chris' memorial, confronting his grief head on, and shares one last birthday toast with his best friend. 

Crew 

Cast

Filmmakers Intentions 

When first drafting the initial ideas for "Here Without You", I concluded that the best course of action that would allow me to convey my themes of: grief, loss and loneliness would be creating this film through the lens of the Cinematographer. 

As Cinematographer I used lighting and camera angles to immerse the audience in the inner workings of Jason's grief-stricken mind. I wanted the audience to feel sympathy for the main character, as we have all lost a freind or a loved one either due to their passing or just circumstance. Here is where I decided to make Jason isolated from the outside world, by contrasting day and night shots. The night being the present and day being flashbacks to his times with Chris. He would typically be shot with Chris in long shots during bright daylight in order to make Jason's memories more vivid. Then in the night shots i decided to shoot with heavy close ups seeing the details and expressions on Jasons face, relating the audience more to the character.

 For the final scene I wanted the memorial to represent Jason's confrontation with grief. He faces his greif and sits next to the memorial as if he was sitting next to Chris. Here I decided to play aroud with lighting, first lighting the details of the memorial and then on Jason, to simulate a real interaction between the two. Overall im proud to have been able to be able to demonstrate my camerawork skills on the making of: "Here without You".