“Paediatric palliative care is a humanistic, holistic care of a child who is seriously ill.”
This 4-part docu series by @weiyufilms provides an intimate look into the lives of children who have an unpredictable amount of time left to live, and the stories of their caregivers.
The look that director Lee Thean-Jeen and producer Lim Bee Lin wanted was ‘real’, something that took several iterations to achieve. After subtly stripping away the coloration of the image using 5 different ways to chip away at the vibrance of the image, the finishing touch to achieve the look was something that came as a surprise to me: having ‘video camera’ as an inspiration.
Not film – which is often the go-to aesthetic for most projects – but video. Having shot on Hi-8 and Mini-DV in my youth, I imparted certain elements of what I remember analog and digital video to feel like, rather than trying to emulate that entire look outright. There’s something about video that can feel more…raw and intimate. It also helps that the series was shot on a modern camcorder style camera.
It’s this combination of nuanced muteness of colour and that some of that video feel that also helped me to connect to that every day, unadorned environment and routines that these children and their caregivers go through daily.
