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Joel Honeywell has just completed his first full-length feature as DOP – and he’s only getting started BREAKING THE MOULD
DOP JOEL HONEYWELL is in a buoyant mood. He recently finished shooting Raging Grace , his first full-length film, and is rightly proud of the achievement. “It’s currently in the grade and some VFX needs doing, but it’s looking amazing,” he enthuses. “Sometimes, when you see debut films, it’s obvious they’re low-budget. But everyone on this project put in such an effort, it looks
like there was some spend behind it – in reality, we had no money!” Completing his first feature represents a significant milestone in Honeywell’s burgeoning career. Over the past decade, he’s sampled a range of on-set roles, including stepping in front of the camera for a couple of shorts. “That was when I was hanging around the NFTS seeing
what people were doing,” he tells us. “I was trying to work out whether I should go to film school, or take the leap and start shooting stuff. Making a film is collaborative, so getting experience across multiple departments was my own kind of self-taught film education.” This multifaceted approach gave Honeywell solid grounding, and from there he followed a familiar path, shooting music videos and shorts. “I wasn’t interested in the music side, it just became a pathway,” he admits. “It’s an experimentation process. You can flex the creative muscle, but for the longer term, the narrative world is where you want to be. There, you’ve got to craft something that will stand the test of time and people will be talking about. Music videos date, films have longevity.” As well as his inaugural feature, Raging Grace is also Honeywell’s first step into horror. The storyline centres on an undocumented Filipina immigrant arriving in the UK, finding work caring for a terminally ill man. The horror is more psychological than physical, with the camera work an integral part of the storytelling. “The monster is human, what they believe in makes them a monster. It takes the class system and puts it to an extreme level: how one group of people perceive another,” explains Honeywell. “Horror is all about building tension,” he continues. “I wanted the viewer to be immersed close to the characters, and see how perceptions of the world change, depending on viewpoint. For the younger character, we used lower camera angles, with a narrow depth-of-field. Kids are curious, so it was about discovery. For others, screen presence would vary depending on how they were feeling. If they felt isolated, they’d be small. If they felt powerful, they’d be much bigger. We wanted to keep a rhythm going, so the viewer is intrigued by both story and characters.”
“Sometimes, when you see debut films, it’s obvious they’re low-budget. But everyone on this project put in such an effort, it looks like there was some spend behind it – in reality, we had no money!”
TEAMWORK Joel Honeywell (left) understands the collaboration required in making film and television
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