Director’s Statement:

For me, film always begins with cinematography. Spielberg, Spike Lee and Scorsese always know what to do with the camera. Today, directors and cinematographers continue to pioneer new approaches to filming , where even broken lenses can play essential roles in each cut. It’s all about what fits, and why. For The Espresso Job, I wanted to create a language that would evoke chaos around every corner of its characters’ adventure. 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 a heist film, I immediately wanted to combine elements of some of my favorite crime films — Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven and Anderson’s Bottle Rocket initially came to mind. While writing the picture, we tried 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 The Espresso Job’s premise from following “two experienced thieves” to “two unprofessional low-lifes who don’t get along, are paired up to steal a diamond together.” A 4:3 aspect ratio would support this approach, and enabled us to achieve a sort of timeless aesthetic — surrounding the film’s characters with Philadelphia’s gritty but eclectic architecture helped to place the film sometime between the ‘60s, ‘90s and early 2000s.