Hard Boiled Sweets movie posters — Nathan Gallagher Photography

Who wouldn’t want to be David Hughes? You’re probably thinking ‘who’s David Hughes’? Well it turns out he’s a rather talented writer, director and editor. He recently got to write, direct and edit a feature called Hard Boiled Sweets.

From the looks of things it’s a dark, character-led, gangster plot set in Essex and Southend-on-sea . The little I’ve seen of it – and I mean little (I missed the crew screening due to offspring overwatch, but saw some rushes) is lit to perfection in a style which harks (as the name suggests) back to the sharp-and-shadowy Hardboiled fiction genre.

One of the producers of the film is an old friend of mine and I was bought in to shoot some images of the cast in my studio – and what a cast it was! Forget your 1-10 Ulmer scale actors and look for the best person for a part and you’d be hard-pressed to find better. David must have been rubbing his hands together in glee as each actor was signed up – look at the images and you’ll see what I mean.

When I was on set I was very impressed by the speed and precision of the lighting set-ups (cinematography by Sara Deane) often in fairy pressing conditions and without the luxury of a backlot. There was one exterior shot I saw in the rushes (a slow movement across a garden at night) that was so slick it looked like an oil spill. Proper cinematic loveliness.

Shooting the posters was an interesting process, working with David (and the actors themselves of course) we tried to pull out the character in each shot, however rather than pulling them in a scene of the film (as is often done in these sort of posters) I wanted them to imagine their character was, for one reason or other, having their photo taken in a studio during the timeline of the plot. So removing them from their environment but making sure they bought their baggage with them.

The post-production and poster design was done by the lovely people at Klor and I’m pretty happy with the results, now I can’t wait to see the film.

EDIT: I might add that a I was pretty stoked to get to meet Dr. René Belloq from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom!