Unit 2: Insignificant

Our second directions workshop was similar to the first. I acted as director while choosing one person in my group to star in my short film and another to operate the camera. This time we created work in our chosen director's style. We were to decide on what type of main character our director would most likely use and then create a short film introducing them. As my chosen director is David Fincher I made my main character a loner and tried to create work that included the following trademarks of his...

• Low-key lighting with green/blue tinted colour temperature
• Wide shots
• Low angles
• Music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
• A character with poor social skills and few friends
• A title sequence that expresses the theme of the film
• Static camera movements and a single handheld scene
• Shot looking inside a character's fridge

I wrote my idea out step by step and then created a shot list for this project to make sure I could include every single trademark and be thorough when it came to filming. I think the best way to film even very short films is to create a shot list as it kept everything organised, timely and none of my ideas got forgotten or left out. I filmed for about 30-45 minutes.

I named this 'Insignificant' as it describes exactly how a loner character like mine feels, unimportant and meaningless. I used dust floating in the air in my opening titles and closing credits as a representation of something so insignificant and small that no one even notices it, similar to this character. I used the song 'One Particular Moment' by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross from the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack, a Fincher film with a loner main character.

It took a long time to finally get to edit this as I was once again having issues with Adobe Premiere and the film's file type, but I finally managed to solve the problem and I'm pleased with how this has come out. I think you can clearly tell what kind of character he is and I think I've managed to capture some of Fincher's style. I'm especially proud of my technique of using a spotlight lighting effect on all of the clips (except for the fridge) to make light behind the character appear brighter, make the room around him look darker and draw more attention to his face. I'm even more excited to get more in depth into our directions unit. Anyway, here is my work...