F Word is a self-funded, short-film reflecting on child abandonment as a young woman confronts the recurring issues from her biological father. Taking us on a journey across South London, we’re shown the affects of a distant father on a receptive, young woman as she confronts seemingly inescapable and uncontrollable conflicts in an honest portrayal of self-discovery.
Writer & Director Savanah Leaf says; "The idea for the film came from a collection of experiences shared by myself and many of my friends and family. It touches on a genuine feeling of being alone—speaking to those having lost, misplaced, or are missing a person who has been part of their life story and it touches on a unifying theme of self-discovery.
It started out as a simple concept which developed as I wrote the script, and began connecting people together to create the cast and crew. We connected and formed a team based on our passion and belief in the film, which is why I believe there is a strength that definitely comes out through the energy in the story. I worked closely with the actress Savanna, to adapt the script to fit her language and to allow the text to resonate with her as well as everyone else working on the film.”
Colourist Oisin O’Driscoll comments; "The brief was to make the film as cinematic as possible and Savanah was very closely involved in the development of the looks for the project. We began developing a natural, clean look for the whole film to give us a strong starting point which helped us build a very good relation and understanding of how we both interpreted the images and the story.
From this neutral point we started experimenting with different looks and varying strength of styles that would compliment the natural feel we created. We found that edging towards a dark, slightly contrasted look, best suited the images from the camera as well as the overall story.
The one scene which was very interesting in this project is the moment when we see the character’s life as an almost dream-like sequence from the car window. I came up with a few ideas for this and the look we decided worked best was a strong cyan with slight chromatic aberration around the edges of the image. This flowed best with the cyan highlights we had added to the rest of the film and the chromatic aberration added an otherworldly feel while still being in the natural world."