The idea that the border between reality and dream can be blurry at times seemed interesting enough to us to play with it in the context of a short film. We decided to do this by telling (what we considered) a very simple story. Following the idea that dreams have their own logic we tried to stay open to spontaneous connections, hoping that each one would make her or his own interpretation of what her or he sees. The protagonist of the film starts in the realm of dreams suggested by a series of strange images. The first shot after the opening scene brings us back into a more familiar environment, the apartment of the protagonist who watches a cooking show on TV. At this moment, strange things start taking place again. By juxtaposing flashbacks from the dream state, clips from the tv show and occurrences from the ‘present’ we attempted to create a certain link between the beginning and the end.
During the process of developing and realizing the film, our story changed quite a bit. On the one hand, we tried to scrutinize and discuss every idea openly. Our team felt it was necessary that we ourselves knew why we wanted the character/mood to be in a certain way. Even though we were conscious of making definitive choices at the time, we were open to the possibility of our work taking a completely different turn in the end. Given that our actor was available for only two days we had to be very well prepared for the shoot so that we didn’t lose any time during the shoot. Before the shoot, we had graphically laid out each and every shot in the form of a storyboard. Doing numerous test shoots on set before the shooting days with different lightings also proved to be extremely helpful.
Despite being well prepared, we faced some challenges during the shoot. On the day of our shoot, our next door neighbour had to drill the walls of his cellar which meant that we couldn’t use the sound. At the end of the first day of shooting, we discussed that we needed to communicate better as a team and distribute roles in a clear way.
Our film set, however small, with all its tiny details and structures; the apartment was perfect for the mood we were aiming for. The two rooms that we were using for our shoot had very contrasting settings, - warm (yellow walls) lightning vs. cold (blue wall) lightning and stuffed vs. empty.
In the post production, we worked on editing, grading and sound design using Adobe Premiere/After Effects, Davinci Resolve, and Avid ProTools, getting various inputs by the tutors.
For the sound, the idea was to start by using the sound from the set (ambience, actor, TV) only. After some tests and discussion, we decided to enhance the atmosphere by adding (and manipulating) some sounds from the sound library.
On receiving some very constructive feedback, we realised that our film had (and in a way still has) a structural problem. Trying to overcome this, we changed the storyline once more into the final non-linear version that begins with the dream sequence, then brings us into (assumed) reality, in which strange events start to happen again and like this finally (or hopefully) close a circle.
