The final concept for my Short Film is a somewhat cliche horror tale. It consists of a man going down an elevator and into an underground garage, presumably to get his car. However, when he enters the garage he realises that the light switch is on a short timer and will turn back off quite soon after initially turning it on. This results in him seeing a mysterious figure within the darkness who subsequently disappears once the protagonist turns the lights back on. Curious, and perhaps not being the most clever character, he proceeds to walk deeper into the garage, both to investigate further and to complete his initial goal of getting his car.

While the Film is no doubt set in the present day, with the abundance of modern cars evident in the garage itself, my aim was to stylize it in the vain of a classic horror movie most reminiscent of those produced in the 1930/40s. I did this by draining the colour out of the Film, making it black and white, along with adding overlays to make the footage itself appear more damaged and old. This process was very similar to how I made my Music Video look more Western, only instead of a Sepia tone I used a Black and White filter.

I do feel as though I could have done more to emphasize the vintage aspect of my Film. Specifically, I was contemplating framing the footage in a 4:3 aspect ratio, as though it was actually filmed on a much older camera than it truly was. I ultimately wish that I did do this in hindsight, as there was a distinct lack of movies shot in 1920×1080, particularly at that time and as such it may have taken away from the vintage effect as a whole. Still, I am glad that I didn’t sacrifice the clarity of the film and therefore it may not have been the worst decision made.

Of the influences that I chose to take aspects from at the start of production, I would say that I stayed accurate to two of them. The Mummy (1932) is stylistically the closest to my Short Film as a result of me essentially basing the aesthetic of my movie off of this one, primarily putting it in Black and White. When it came to appearance, I imagined my own movie as though it was filmed at a similar time as The Mummy, but rather than being preserved and remastered multiple times, my own movie remained fairly obscure and as such did not receive as much attention when it came to repackaging it. This was my reasoning for adding the damage effects throughout the Short Film.

The second influence that I say my Film remained true to was Lights Out as its concept is very similar to my own, placing a key focus on lights turning on and off, and the deadly specters that lurk within the shadows. I would class this as the perfect example of a short horror film and I would say that it is the most evident influence in my work as a whole. As a matter of fact, I myself would even argue that I came quite close to simply making a copy of this Film, as the premise of the antagonist being seen only when the light turns off is exceptionally close to Lights Out. Fortunately, I don’t utilize light switches as much as Lights Out does and so I would say that I just about got away with using it as simply an influence.

My third and final influence listed is one that I would in fact say is nothing like the finished product. Stephen King’s Misery is a film about a writer who gets held captive by a deluded fan and is forced to write a new book in order to save himself. My finished film has little to nothing in common with this aside from the basic element of them both being in the horror genre. However, when my Film first started production and was an almost entirely different movie (see the script uploaded), I had clarified that the protagonist was in fact a writer and the enemies that he faced had been caused by the current story that he was writing. Had I continued on my initial path, Misery would arguably be my most obvious influence but in the case of the final product the two films are nothing alike. Still, this movie was a big influence at the start of my production, and without this stage of production I would not have reached the final product. By this logic, it may have still had more of an influence that I give it credit for.

When it comes to the actual composition of my movie, I am rather conflicted. On one hand, I am quite happy with the majority of the shots that were included in the final cut, with the only exception being one shot that was fairly blurry but had to be included for the sake of moving the protagonist from one location to another (as seen below). Overall though, I feel as though while not all of the shots are phenomenal, they are a consistent enough quality to elevate the film’s quality, even if only slightly.

On the editing side of things, I feel as though what I did to make the movie feel more vintage works well, despite being rather similar to my Music Video at the same time. However, I also think that I could have put a lot more effort into how I compiled the shots, specifically when it comes to transitioning between them. There is a distinct lack of any real transitions whatsoever and so even to me it feels like the shots have been lazily piled together in chronological order, which is a shame because while the editing is consistent enough to tell the story I wanted to, I feel like the lack of complexity in transitions does in fact detract from the story overall and makes the film feel as though it is going at a rather quick pace.

Furthermore, the Foley/Audio editing only adds to my point of feeling like the editing process as a whole was quite rushed. While I am happy with the Foley that I did add, primarily due to my lack of experience as a whole while doing it, I feel like I place an over reliance on music as a result of the audio that I recorded on set being quite poor, which would have likely made the movie much worse. As such, while feeling like I relied to heavily on sound effects that most definitely were not mine, I think I made the right choice by doing so. Though I am worried that at certain points the music chosen does not match the overall level of terror that I initially intended.

Overall I feel, much like the music video prior, that I did not use my time efficiently, arguably even less so this time. I think that this is primarily due to me changing the entire premise of the movie as a result of shooting it in Spain instead, which is a shame as I was quite a big fan of my initial idea. At the same time, I think that I might have actually struggled more with my first idea as it was a lot more ambitious. While I am satisfied with the final product, I am not as happy with it as I am with my Music Video. It’s hard to tell whether or not it was a good choice to abandon my initial idea: as far as I know it may have actually ended up being worse than the outcome of this one. It is safe to say that if I was to do this again, I would definitely stick with my initial idea if only out of curiosity as to what the finished film would look like.