Bloom
Bloom is a new coming of age short film about four teenage girls; Sabrina, Rianne, Tracey, and Ruby. We enter the world of these girls at a point in their lives when they are just beginning to grapple with the greater issues of adulthood. Their world is a melange of school subjects, dance routines, music, and the looming issue of sex. In this film we get to see how they manage themselves internally and together as friends. As their summer comes to an end we realize that the sun may also be setting on a part of their youth that they will never be able to get back.
Bloom subtly explores friendship, urgency to grow, community, dreams, child abuse, alongside a few others. Whilst the film is delicate, fun, and nostalgic, Jesse also believes it to be important. Touching on universal themes, but also specific subject matters placed to evoke thoughts and hopefully conversation. The director, Jesse, has a trilogy of short films he would ideally like to complete. All three films meddle with the theme of identity alongside a few others.
Jesse was very aware of the slew of coming of age short films in feature films, but especially in short narrative landscapes. "I knew I had to create real characters, three dimensional characters that essentially people could relate to, if I was able to do that, then people would come on this journey with us and the girls. That's what this film is; it's a journey, but also a snippet of time observing youth and also the challenges these girls are overcoming or will have to overcome."
Camille Nock, the assistant director of Bloom, states, "These four girls are powerful in their own right. They represent; hope, dreams, love, and the film depicts real issues." Georgia James, who plays Sabrina in the film, said, "It's just refreshing to pick up a script that isn't your stereotypical coming of age film with bland characters, I was blown away when I found out Jesse had written this."
The writing style of Bloom was very particular for Jesse. He states the film is a sociological perspective. A film that investigates and explores rather than offering definitive answers.
Visually the film has a nostalgic and delicate feel to it due to the grading and color palette used in the final cut. The landscape was important to Jesse, because he felt it said enough about the characters and some of their families' social economics without requiring too much detail. The fields where some of the action takes place aided his vision, "when you're younger going to the park or up and down on the bus was more than enough to satisfy you in terms of a day with your friends. These fields represented freedom essentially."
Luke Farley, the DOP for Bloom, is a relative newcomer but has worked on many music videos and dance narrative projects. He is part of the duo Leave No Trace who film a lot of footage for NTS Radio. What attracted Jesse to Luke for the project was his ability to understand that cinematography is essentially choreography of physical and emotional movement between the camera and the actor. The audience member needed to feel as though the camera was a character itself, by its choice of movement. By being on the same page early on before shooting it allowed them to work efficiently on set and allowing the work of the script and the art director, Claire Lemaigre, to come alive.
from the Bloom press kit
