Short Film Primary Research #1 - 'Closed Doors'

My first piece of primary research of thriller short films lead me to 'Closed Doors', which is an award winning short film from 2011, written and directed by James Button, a student in Wales.

I thought this short thriller film was excellent. There are various reasons for this, the main one being that I found the cinematography and editing were of a very high quality. Each shot in this short film looks very clean visually, and the way they handled close ups and extreme close-ups was also very good, in addition to the camera movement also being very clean. Such as, there was a shot at 1:07 where the camera tracks to the right which reveals a glass on a table, and the way the glass comes into focus looks very good on screen.The editing was also very smooth; watching this film really draws you in as the viewer due to the subject on screen and how well the footage flows together.

Furthermore, the lighting throughout this short film was consistently effective. The use of low key lighting establishes the darker tone that the director was trying to get. As the plot for this thriller short film is serious and dark, the lighting and shadows exhibit this very well.

As for the story line and narrative for this short film, I also really like it. The plot explores how past experiences and forms of paranoia can affect your life now and affect you psychologically. This is seen by how the protagonist keeps looking at the photograph and seems to look uncomfortable; then towards the end of the film we see his dad in the photo, perhaps the dad scarred the family for life in an event in the character's past. I think this is a good premise for a short film, because whilst you are watching the story unravel it is all ambiguous and the audience are in the dark on exactly what is happening. This short film has an effective social message about paranoia and I think it was executed considerably well in this short film.

Even though this is the first thriller short film I have researched, I will use this short film as a reference to mine. I would be very happy if I was able to produce a short film like this one, and I may be thinking about this one when it comes to planning and production.