We have to admit that we are a bit crack-headed over Toast, the clothes and home brand. Its catalogues are heart and soul land, where the images convey calm in landscapes of breathtaking beauty, faded grand interiors and peasant homes of peeling paint. It’s an authentic style with an elegant earthiness of clipped unpainted fingernails and smart minds under tousled hair.
We rummaged through Toast’s site to find stunning online films about clothes, travel and other intriguing stories and caught up with photographer and unsigned director Nicholas Seaton, maker of many of Toast’s films and stills.
When did you first pick up a camera and realise you wanted to make films?
I don’t think I did, when I was younger I just enjoyed looking through a lens or at a screen and watching as things unfolded in front of me. The idea of constructing a film that other people might like to watch was an alien one, I just enjoyed the experience of looking. The prospect of conveying a story to an audience and how that might be exciting came later on.
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Did you go to film school or are you self-taught?
No I studied architecture rather than film or photography. Everything I’ve done since has been self-taught or learnt on the job.
So you trained as an architect, what do you think that training brought to your film and photography work?
Studying architecture provides you with a very broad outlook and approach to solving creative problems. It’s a discipline that deals with structural engineering issues alongside social and historical concerns, focusing both on the scale of a city and that of a person.
The narratives that you develop when you design a building can be easily transferred to film; the pacing of spaces, the changes in scale, the way in which light and acoustics are used to manipulate the emotions of the person experiencing the building. That sense of time, pace and intensity is very useful.
On the other hand I sometimes wish I could go back into architecture with the knowledge of light that I have since picked up working as a photographer.
Your work has a distinctive rich light and texture to it. Do you use only natural day light? Are there any special lens and kit you prefer to work with?
Yes nearly always natural daylight. The right light and therefore colour tone really act as a foundation for the construction of my shots, I would love to work with more lighting but still I think these fundamentals would not change.
Whilst shooting in Mexico I used a Letus lens adapter and would often stop the glass disc from spinning so I could get the glass’ grain in shot. Since then I’ve been using the Canon 5D with my own Nikon prime lenses. Anything to get away from the digital video look and soften the image, I’ll usually use really archaic techniques throwing anything that diffuses light in front of the lens. I don’t mind a dirty filter either.
We like the hand-held camera work (or are we mistaken?)
Yeah I really love camera movement and don’t mind the viewer being aware of the camera either, it almost implicates them in what’s happening. There’s a wonderful moment right at the very end of Jim Jarmusch’s “The Limits of Control”, the last shot ends with that movement that we’re all familiar with of the camera dropping off the cameraman’s shoulder and down to his waist. With that last movement the film ends and suddenly it has the effect of implicating the audience in everything they’ve just been passively watching.
I feel the same way about the camera’s focus, I’ll use it to breath some life into the camera to help it react to what it’s watching. Both techniques add some humanity to the camera I think.
The music is very fitting, do you work with the composer after you’ve filmed or do you edit to the music? Who is the composer?
The composer is a talented cellist called Joe Zeitlin, I’ve worked with him on both the Toast mood films. The music happens after I’ve finished shooting and evolves alongside the editing. I’ll have quite a strong idea of what it is, which I then try and describe to Joe using increasingly obscure associations, he then goes away and comes back with a piece that never fails to improve the film ten-fold. It’s a working relationship that I really enjoy, he’ll often tell me if the edit doesn’t do his music justice. It’s such a joy to be part in creating a piece of new music.
And what are you working on now?
I’m working on a personal video project with Joe Zeitlin and a photographic project based in Port Talbot, Wales.
View more work at http://www.nickseaton.com
