Look Solutions Haze helps create magic moments for Two Breaths short film

Kateryna Kurganska and Timur Guseynov are filmmakers on a mission to tell real stories with kindness and compassion. Two Breaths is their thesis film, a story that sweeps the audience along and is also winning over the award judges. When filming the interior footage for their short film, Two Breaths, the pair felt that haze from Looks Solutions USA was the only medium that could bring a lasting magic quality to the air, and would be consistent in their breezy, Hawaiian location.

Two Breaths has been nominated and won many awards, including a nomination for Best Short at the Made in Hawai‘i International Film Festival Awards and the Hamilton Film Festival Awards, where it also won best visual effects. It won the outstanding cinematography award from the Micheaux Film Festival, plus nominations for outstanding director and outstanding dramatic short. The film also won best fantasy at the Catalyst Story Institute Festival and was nominated for best live action short at the St Louis International Film Festival. Kateryna was awarded best woman student film maker at the DGA Student Film Awards and was nominated for Best Drama at College Television Awards.

The film follows Ava, whose idyllic island life is turned upside-down by the deadly fallout from nuclear weapons testing. Ava must hold onto the teachings of her grandfather if she is to survive, relying on the memory of his words and her understanding of nature to find her way. Eventually, she is faced with a stark choice, stay in her dangerously sickened home, or leave it all behind for an uncertain, but safer future.

Director and producer Kateryna had always thought about becoming a filmmaker, but it was not until losing her freelance work as a commercial producer during the Covid-19 Pandemic that she decided to take the plunge and apply to film school. She was accepted into the very prestigious University of Southern California’s (USC) School of Cinematic Arts, MFA in film and TV Production program. It was a gamble that worked out well for both Timur and Kateryna as they married after meeting on the course.

“I came to the US as a refugee in 2014; my hometown, Luhansk (Ukraine) is under occupation and no longer exists,” Kateryna says. “Hawaii took me in and despite the pain and loss I had experienced, offered me warmth and kindness, a new community and family. Two Breaths resonates with people because the idea of home is universal, it is an integral part of your identity, a part that is never left behind.”

Timur is producer and cinematographer for Two Breaths. He knew that Look Solutions USA had the perfect products to help deliver the enchanted feel that Kateryna required for the interior shots of their film. With their award-winning solutions and high quality equipment, Look Solutions was a manufacturer that Timur knew would be ideal, but securing the products on their almost non-existent budget was always going to be a tall order.

“Kateryna wanted a magical quality to the internal shots. We were using digital cameras, and digital footage can sometimes feel too sharp, too clinical, so we used haze to give us the texture back,” Timur explains. “We were all students in the production and everyone that came through was blown away. We don’t usually get to use that quality of product at school!”

Being a thesis film, the project was on a strict budget of only 20,000 dollars, but Kateryna and Timur have been amazed by the industry support they have been shown. Many top-end contributors, from Luma pictures and Look Solutions USA to Skywalker Sound, have supported the film, either with products or by sharing knowledge, and it has been an amazing journey for them.

“There were over 200 people working on this 16-minute short, every single one of them was working as a volunteer, which is crazy,” Kateryna recalls. “To make a film in Hawaii with no money was a pretty ambitious idea, especially one featuring a child actor in their first role and underwater footage of giant Manta Ray, but the kindness that we have been shown has been extraordinary and completely unexpected. We have learnt so much and met so many great mentors, so many people who not only believed in the story but wanted to help us learn.”

Kateryna and Timur used the Look Solutions Unique 2.1, a 1500-watt hazer that benefits from minimal fluid consumption, with multiple settings for output. This makes it a very flexible solution that can be used for many different applications. For Timur the Unique 2.1 offered reliability in a location with lots of airflow, ensuring consistent results across multiple takes. With so many mass-produced consumer units to choose from, the production team could have considered a different option, but as Timur explains, Look Solutions was the only hazer they could imagine using.

“We didn’t want to use an inferior product and risk less consistent images, our options could only ever be Look Solutions, or more filtration on the lenses,” he says. “We were using excellent Atlas Anamorphic lenses, so we really didn’t want to use filters. Look Solutions was able to give us the diffuse quality we needed. We could be very subtle for a nostalgic, sentimental feel, or use a little more haze for a cinematic effect, with light shafts visible from sources like torches, or sunlight through the window slats. We were able to really play with it and get that look and feel.”

The Hawaiian scenery is featured almost as an additional cast member, so even the interior shots feel natural and organic. This came, in part, from the fact that the house used in the film has traditional windows and doors. These offer ample ventilation which is excellent for island living, but not ideal for film shooting, as Timur continues.

“The house was a tree-house-style building and basically the walls were not solid, they had mosquito screens built in, so it was very breezy,” he says. “A cheap hazer would not have coped, which is why we were so glad to work with Look Solutions USA; we could run haze and it would be smooth and really last. We didn’t want to be running around chasing haze, just because there was a little wind!”

Getting to work with Nathan Kahn from Look Solutions USA was another lucky break for Kateryna and Timur and as Nathan adds, they are proud to support such exciting young filmmakers.

“Kateryna and Timur are talented storytellers who did their research and knew what they needed to achieve their results. It is fantastic to see the film being so well received and all of us at Look Solutions know that we will be seeing them produce a full length feature very soon!”

“Not everyone gets to make a thesis film, so I am forever grateful for the opportunity to tell this story,” Kateryna concludes. “It truly took an Island to make it and the optimism and kindness we have been shown by every single person we have asked for help has been amazing. I didn’t always have the words to describe what I wanted for the interior shots, but Timur and Look Solutions gave us the depth, texture and magic we were looking for.”