Director’s Statement:

For me, film always begins with cinematography. I marvel at the days of New Hollywood, when directors like George Lucas and Martin Scorsese understood the significance of camera movement to drive even the simplest of scenes to importance. Nowadays, directors and cinematographers are pioneering new approaches to filming their movies, where broken lenses and century-old lighting can play essential roles in each final cut. It’s all about what fits, and why. For The Espresso Job, I wanted to create something that would plant audiences into a chaotic version of Philadelphia: characters are being tested around every corner. From the nearly never-ending score, to the camera’s physicality throughout scenes, to the very locations in which the film is set, The Espresso Job never loses energy.

When Self approached me with the idea of shooting a heist film, I immediately wanted to combine more suave and calculated elements of Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven with the chaotic, juvenile feeling of Wes Anderson’s 1993 short Bottle Rocket. While writing The Espresso Job, I wanted us to remain conscious of the fact that we were still amateur student filmmakers trying to create an action-packed crime short.

Minding this, we shifted the film’s premise from following “two experienced thieves” to “two unprofessional low-lifes who don’t get along, but are paired up to steal a diamond together.” A 4:3 aspect ratio would support this approach, and could also enable us to achieve a sort of timeless aesthetic — surrounding The Espresso Job’s characters with Philadelphia’s gritty but diversified architecture would help to place the film in a time-warp between the ‘60s, ‘90s and early 2000s.