The Big Black Dark info

logline: When a man wakes up in the woods, bloodied and amnesiac, he encounters various individuals who help him recover.

runtime: 22 minutes

screenplay: available here

format: shot on super 16

budget: $4,000. Funded by a project grant from the Regional Arts + Culture Council

year: 2011

festivals: n/a

thoughts: A short film noir shot on Super 16 mm. I was on vacation reading Red Harvest, which I’d grabbed randomly, and after a few pages I was compelled by the language and the tropes and I knew my next short would have to be a b & w noir, shot on film, though I didn’t know what it would be exactly. I watched nothing but noir for about a year straight and worked on different iterations of the script. I wanted the lead to say nothing until the end, instead have everything about him supplied by supposition of other characters. We shot this across 4 days. I appear in one scene because an actor dropped out late and I knew the script cold. It was not an ideal situation to put it generously because I have zero point zero interest in appearing on screen but I had no alternative. I learned a ton on this project, including but not limited to: the importance of having a production designer (which is funny b/c I haven’t had one on my 2 features and I most definitely should have. So maybe I didn’t learn the lesson too well), the importance of testing a crane shot to see how it looks before you commit, the importance of having a script supervisor, the importance of having money on a shoot, and so forth. This short was a test run of sorts to make my feature The Black Sea, helping me adjust to shooting on Super 16 and all the technical considerations therein. You can watch the entire film below.