Evaluation: 'The Door' Short Film

 The Short Film:

The Concept: 

During the early discussions of ideas for the film, I decided that I wanted to make a film with a dark and mysterious tone. I had seen M. Night Shyamalan's Old at the cinema not too long ago at the time of planning the film, so I personally drew a lot of inspiration from this when bringing ideas to the table; something which is definitely led to our inclusion of a plot surrounding an mysterious experiment as well as the minor plot twist at the end of my short film. Further inspiration for the repetitive loop aspect of our plot was derived from Ground Hog Day (1993) directed by Harold Ramis, where the protagonist is stuck in a loop of a single day, as well as Predestination a 2014 film directed by the Spierig brothers, which features a plot with an ultimately cyclical nature.

I think this idea for a film with predominantly dark, mysterious tone played well into our stimulus which was ‘The Door’ as what is on the other side of a doorway can often be unknown. Doors can hold a lot of power in that they can grant you access to new places, keep you out of them, or worse: keep you in. So while the film heavily featured doors in the literal sense, I think it explores the implicit significance doors can have which is so often taken for granted in everyday life. This dynamic was physically created by having the doors be the only tool used by the faceless antagonist to torture the protagonist. In the film, doors serve as a barrier to escape in the natural sense, but we took this deeper buy implying that the doors had some kind of supernatural or otherwise extraordinary (to be left to interpretation) power to keep the protagonist from escaping. This further compounds the sinister tone of the film as the character is not only trapped, but trapped by means which are beyond his understanding, which introduces an element of terror and frustration.

I ensured the film continued to have a sense of mystery from the audience's perspective by choosing not to include dialogue and offering little exposition, instead encouraging the audience to make inferences based on what they were showed, such as the security camera shots, cutaways to the antagonist, and the twist at the end. Not only was this convenient from a practical point of view because we had limited resources, due to the nature of the 'Four Hour Film Challenge' format used for production, but it served as a narrative tool to tell the story mainly from the main character's perspective.

While everyone in the group agreed on an ending that repeated the cycle of entrapment in some way, I decided to take this one step further during my editing process by using repeated shots and out takes to have the protagonist be forcibly returned to where he started one final time after he was seemingly about to leave the setting – implying that there was no escape and no end to the cycle. I feel this made my version of the ending more appropriately given the the established logic in the world we created, where the antagonist somehow had the ability to forcibly bring the hero back where he started. I received positive feedback from viewers of the film about this cyclical narrative and my variation of the ending. 

Practical Skills: 

An important part of the brief was to include match-on-action shots in the film. I feel like I succeeded in doing this well by filming shots of key actions from multiple angles and carefully editing these together to create the illusion of continuous motion viewed from different perspectives. The three main match on action shots in my film are when the protagonist walks through the first door, the exit door, and transition from him walking towards the camera to walking away from it down the corridor. However, there is room for improvement as the cuts at these points are not completely invisible and this may have been given away by slight differences in the first and second parts of these shots, particularly in the corridor one where I had some difficulty matching my walking speed in both shots. 

On this project, most of the camera work was done by another group member, however I did set up a few of the shots and helped with the adjustment of camera settings. I wanted to experiment with a variety of shot types despite much of the film being set in a small space. We were successful in this because of our use of a range of shots, each with narrative purposes as well, meaning they were not just included for the sake of using many different shot types. Examples of this include the opening extreme close-up, which was chosen to be the very first thing the audience sees as the goal was to slowly reveal information to them as the introduction progressed. This allowed the audience to indirectly step into the perspective of our main character who has just woken up and is also slowly gathering information from his new surroundings. This gradual gain in awareness is mirrored for the audience as the opening sequence progresses from extreme close-up at the start to wider shots that show the environment from different angles, cultivating in the final long shot styled as CCTV footage, which revealed information both about the room and the plot because it implies our character is being watched by an unknown person or group. Throughout the film, a mix of long shots and close-ups are juxtaposed with each other to portray feelings of isolation and yet claustrophobia respectively – again, to give the audience a sense of what it is like for the unnamed character confined to the small room. 

Our lighting options at the time were very limited as the only light sources we had access to were the installed lights in the spaces we filmed in, phone flash-lights and an adjustable ring light. However, we were still able to use these light sources to capture reasonably well exposed footage and even implement lighting as a narrative tool. We chose to use the ring light to light the first room as it produced cold-looking, harsh light and, when used by itself, would cast shadows from most of the objects in the scene, resulting in an unfriendly and uncomfortable atmosphere. This freed up the warmer ceiling lights to be used later. I had the idea of having these lights be turned on when the door of the first room opened to signal the change and reflect the character’s hope of escaping with the warmer colour temperature.

However, our reliance on the ring light did not mix well with the large variety of shot perspectives and angles used in the same room as it meant we had to constantly move the light around to keep different shots well-lit and to ensure the light was not visible in any of the shots. This means that there are some continuity errors in the consistency of the lighting. This problem might have been solved by having a textual explanation for the ring light to be visible in the setting, or otherwise replacing the ring light with a light source more appropriate to the film's setting which could fulfil the same lighting requirements.

Health and Safety:

During the production of the short film, some health and safety considerations were made to minimise the risk of injury to both our crew and those in the area not involved in the production. Examples of the measures we took are: we made sure our filming location was clear of other people before filming began and that the location we chose was quiet, which was important because it was on a college campus where there can be large groups of students congregation and moving between classes; use of appropriate equipment where possible such as a tripod to elevate the position of the camera for high angle shots.

However, there were some ways in which the health and safety of the production could have been improved, like the creation of a risk assessment based on the filming location and the filming process. One specific way the production could have been made safer for the crew was to remove unnecessary objects that were present on location, particularly the sound proof recording room we used as a mock prison cell, which may have posed a higher risk because it was a small room with a lot of technical equipment and cords on the floor posing a tripping hazard.

Another specific example where health and safety could have been improved was the shot we recorded where I was swinging on a chair, portraying my character's boredom. This is an especially relevant example because I did momentarily lose balance when we this was being filmed - posing a risk of injury to myself. It is clear that a thorough risk assessment would have reduced the danger of filming this scene as it would have allowed me to foresee the risk of this action and take precautions for my safety so this is something I will endeavour to include in future video and film productions.

Editing: 

The greatest challenges of the editing process for me were making the match-on-action shots look as smooth as possible and ensuring good continuity in all the cuts between shots, bar the montages where the later was not so important. I was successful in this as the match-on-action technique throughout the film is convincing and none of the cuts between angles look unnatural or too jumpy.

As a group, we had the idea of including two short montages: the ‘waiting montage’, where our protagonist is shown passing the time while locked in the room, and the ‘loop montage’ which depicts his progress being reset many times by quickly cutting between many shots of the protagonist opening different doors. I am proud of the implementation of these ideas in my edit as the pacing of each montage is appropriate to its narrative context, transitions and cuts are well executed, and the accompanying music matches the tone at each point. In fact, I am especially pleased with how well my non-diagetic music soundtrack matches with the video, with rises and falls in the instrumental accompanying key moments in the film, such as when the lights turn on and the door opens, and when the protagonist is able to walk through the final door. 

I also experimented with unconventional techniques such as reusing shots and, in the case of the corridor shot, repeating and reversing the shot. Reusing the same shot of the character waking up for the intro and waking up during the loop helped to emphasise the repetition he went was subjected to. It also felt appropriate as the confusion our character felt at the very beginning waking up in an unfamiliar place would be mirrored by his confusion at waking up after walking through every door. This also led me to use a different take of the waking up shot at the end of this montage to subtly suggest to the audience that this time will be different and signal that the frustrating loop montage has given way to a continuation of progress for the character.

Conclusion: 

I am very pleased with my work on this film and how the final product turned out overall. It is a simple, yet intriguing short story with cinematography and editing that supports and enhances the meaning in the narrative. However, there is one large continuity error that cannot be overlooked. Filming took place over two sessions across two days and on the second day I forgot to bring the exact same clothes that I filmed with the previous day, a responsibility crucial to my acting role as the main character. The negative impact of this error is only minor as the only changes of clothing were small items such as my hat, glasses, and wristband and the character’s clothing was not important to the plot. Nonetheless, it is a very noticeable continuity error and undermines the quality and professionalism of the production overall.

Despite the continuity error, I would assess my production of 'The Door' short film, in collaboration with my peers, as a successful project on the whole. Even as a newcomer to film production, I was able to firmly grasp the practical skills involved in setting up camera and lighting as well as the creative skills required to produce a meaningful story, which led to me achieving the vast majority of what I set out to do.