Thom: A Portrait of Modern Youth by Riley Blakeway [Online release]

A short, experimental documentary piece about a 19 year old teen growing up in Australia- Exploring the mind of modern youth and Generation Y.

Written and Directed by Riley Blakeway

Assistant Editor - Jeremy Asher Lynch

Film & Telecine - Nano Lab

THOM - A PORTRAIT OF MODERN YOUTH from Riley Blakeway on Vimeo.

"Why did you make Thom?"

"It was about the progression of my work in film. That was another reason I wanted to shoot everything in Super 8. I funded everything myself and didnʼt send out any proposals or anything like that. It wouldnʼt really have made sense to do so. I wanted to keep everything as in touch with the reference piece as possible and keep it indie. I didnʼt want any “cool” brand associations. I wanted it to stand alone. A lot of the film was scripted, even down to the exact shot. But, mostly out of anticipation, as I know Thom so well. The socially awkward responses were something that I anticipated and knew would complete the film for me. At first, I dubbed all of my audio with an American voiceover but scratched it at the last minute because of the loss of chemistry. It was more pre- and post-production than almost anything Iʼve made. Mostly with the edit and sound sync working with Super 8. I had to shoot everything in 30-second intervals to keep costs down and keep everything in sync. After finalising the piece to 12 minutes, I sent it to a studio in LA for the final mix. It came back sounding worse so I recorded all of the sound elements onto a tape using a four-track recorder and mixed the sound live manually.