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WHO AM I?
My name is Riley Walters, an aspiring Director, Writer, Cinematographer and Editor from London. I have graduated from the BRIT School Post 16 Year 13, and have also graduated studying Film at the University of Brighton. I'd like to go into directing for films, music videos and video games, as I want to do a bit of everything in my life, and have strong passions for every area. This website is a portfolio of sorts for all of my work. If you like what you see here and are looking to work with me you can contact me at rsmkwalters@gmail.com !
MY PROJECTS
NEAR-HEARTED was the second music video I shot and edited for the London based duo Beefcake. It is the first of their singles for their upcoming EP, and has received incredible traction, with six thousand views within the first few days! I'm very glad the art director of Beefcake Nuch Saba entrusts me with their vision so much as it's been great working with them so far.
Unlike the previous video for "Angel Food" which felt more like a performance, Near Hearted feels more meticulously narrative based as well as having brilliant visual design by Nuch to capture. This meant I got to work closely with Nuch to put together the narrative and I also got to dive back into my horror bag with visual direction in certain moments, inspired by my work on previous projects such as Mould and Cassette.
MOULD (2024) was my final project while studying at University of Brighton, a labour of hard work that three years of studying amounted to. We worked with the talented Ross Mullan (Doctor Who, Game of Thrones) who portrayed Leon, a sickly man whose reality starts to bend as he comes down with a deadly sickness.
As well as helping a large amount with pre production in planning the film, I was the Cinematographer and Lead Editor. I think this film really showcases how far my visual skills have come, especially when enabled by equipment from University such as lights.
ZIPWHARF (2024)
ZIPWHARF is the debut film by my good friend Percy Manthey. We have been making short films and small comedy sketches for years since meeting at the BFI Saturday Film Makers club when we were 12/13 years old. Through all the experience we have accrued, it has all culminated in this. The first Argon Films feature film, the last comedy film. Primarily written by Percy and additional writers Jacob Burney and Milo Spanyol-Woods, I was chosen as cinematographer and lead camera operator on this wild independent thrill ride. Almost all of Summer 2023 was dedicated to shooting this, the best summer of my life.
I'm proud of a lot of the shots in this film. I worked closely with director Percy Manthey to bring his vision to life, using a lot of central framing and still shots, and although a lot is still, everything is constantly moving with a naturalistic small sway to every shot, from establishing shot to close up. Despite the heightened reality approach to the narrative and writing, ZIPWHARF remains feeling grounded. As my first venture into feature length film making, I'm very proud of my involvement in this film.
BEEFCAKE - ANGEL FOOD (2024)
ANGEL FOOD is the debut song from the band BEEFCAKE, a pop rock band from London. As I have been friends with one of the members Nuch Saba for a few years, they asked me to come on board to shoot this video, and eventually edit the video for them too. ANGEL FOOD is a narrative music video, which meant I got a lot of experience in the challenge of editing together a cohesive narrative under the constraints of filling a traditional music video format.
Crafting a music video is very different as opposed to making a film. A lot of the time in a standard film production, you will have the occasional beautiful shot spliced in between scenes of standard dialogue shot reverse shots. However in a music video, nearly every shot has to have some sort of iconography to make the video memorable, which is something I strived hard to succeed in.
I shot this video on the Black Magic 6k with a shoulder rig primarily, but to alleviate the natural bits of shake and un steadiness for some of the more iconic and atmospheric shots, I applied stabilization in post.
Working on this video really pushed my video editing skills to create interesting effects with the use of blend modes on overlaying shots. I also incorporated moments of Gaussian Blur to remove some of the digital sheen the footage had and give a lot of scenes a nice glowing effect which also helped to disguise imperfections in the set design when moments were to feel more clean and pristine. I also did some masking work to clean up some shots, like removing undesirable background elements like electrical sockets. Masking also helped to create amazing blur effects to create shots similar to split diopter shots like in my favourite movies such as Evil Dead.
CASSETTE (2023)
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY, EDOTPR
CASSETTE is a horror short film that acts as a loose continuation of RAISE. The characters, Ed and Henry are two twisted young film makers, implied to be the creators of me and Robert's previous collaboration film Raise, who are shocked when the content of some new snuff films they purchase hits a little too close to home.
For this film we hired a good friend of mine Duja Saba to do some special effects makeup and they really knocked it out of the park
I designed this poster, utilizing my favourite and shot in the film, inspired by a scene in No More Heroes 3. We had a plastic sheet held by crew infront of the camera which our actor was slammed into, to give the effect that the camera was inside the TV looking out at them.
our wrap photo!
Our lighting person, Annabelle Otto-Bruch next to me in this photo sadly passed away just after filming. May she rest in peace.
Me doing some sound design for some gross head crushing noises
I learnt very important lessons through shooting Cassette. Commonly I'd work with DSLRs and even an old home video tape camera for our film Raise, but this time, working with a higher quality camera was an invaluable experience that taught me a lot more about lens choices and the importance of framing to compose pleasing shots. Even though it pails in comparison to the amount of effort we've put into future projects, at the time this was a very challenging but rewarding project. We put a lot more effort into shot composure, as well as set design to reflect these grimy character's personalities. It unfortunately meant walking into a lot of corner shops and awkwardly buying porn magazines, but it was all worth it in the end, to create a film that doesn't feel like a student film, rather a grimy 80s exploitation-esque short.
RAISE (2022)
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY, EDITOR
RAISE is a horror short film starring Alfie Hall and Connor Benson, following a business man's psyche during a mental breakdown processing what he did just to get a pay rise.
This is the first project I worked on as a final year project at the University Of Brighton, we filmed it all on a tape camera and a little bit with a drone. I worked with director Robert Gilbert closely to create this, and we went on to work on multiple projects of the horror genre since.
RAISE might have been the first project I was truly proud to put my name on, at least as one of the primary creative forces. Me and Robert worked so hard and made something really special with a really unique feeling, but what added to that unique feeling is the music and one of the primary locations, the office set sourced by our late, great producer Theo Khelfoune Ferreras who unfortunately has passed away. The film would not have been the same without his contributions.
WRITER, DIRECTOR, A LIL BIT OF CAMERA OP, EDITOR
A Walk In The Woods follows Percy (played by Aleksander Markovich) as he takes a walk in the woods and finds a girl called Duja (played by Duja Saba), a mysterious girl who lives in the woods with a red cat mask. This ensues a story of Duja trying to turn Percy into a good person so that he can look after his friend James (played by Freddie Maw).
A WALK IN THE WOODS (2018)
SUPERNOVA (2018)
WRITER, DIRECTOR, EDITOR, A LIL BIT OF CAMERA OP
Supernova is a sci-fi story about the end of the world, a dying star, the sun imploding, whichever way you wish to interpret the ending, that's not the main focus of the piece. The story follows two friends, played by Percy Manthey and Freddie Maw, over the course of a month, from first being told of the unstoppable threat, to their last moments on the planet. We see their relationship grow and fall apart, we see the anger that builds within when new revelations come to be, and we see how these two friends cope with what's going on.
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