The Edge of Africa is a short film recorded at Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa, where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet.  The local ocean currents and temperamental weather have caused many ships to end up in pieces on the rocks.

I tried to capture the moody and rugged atmosphere of the place. The footage originally wasn’t shot with any specific project in mind. I had been to this location on previous trips to South Africa and thought it would be an excellent place to test out the Canon 5D mk2. I like to keep things really simple, especially on location, so I chose to shoot everything with a single lens: the Canon 50mm f/1.4. The only other pieces of equipment involved were an ND filter for some exposure control, a polarizer and a GorillaPod to stabilize the camera on the rocks.

In almost all the shots the framing is static. I wanted to focus on composition and also bring out the subtle motion of the clouds and ocean, which could easily get lost in panning and zooming. The exception is the close-up pan of the rocks, which was hand held, hoping I could make something usable out of it using FCP’s smoothcam, which worked out pretty well in the end.

I opted for a really contrasty black and white look, since that seemed fitting for the mood I was after. In a further attempt to achieve a dramatic feel, some of the shots of the waves crashing on the rocks were slowed down to about 80% speed. The human brain “knows” the physics of moving water, and the slower speed tricks it into perceiving the crashing wave as bigger and further away than it actually is. 

The story line is deliberately kept very simple, as the idea was to let the landscape speak for itself. I ended up using quite a lot of footage of the car, since its clean, smooth lines created an interesting contrast with the ruggedness of the rocks, even though as a result the whole thing could potentially be mistaken for a BMW commercial...

The music is Only Now by Red Friday. It’s available on iTunes here.