Human Short Film: Idea to Export

I first came up with the idea for my short film after going to see "Under the Skin" with Scarlett Johansson in the cinema. I loved the idea of an alien fitting into human surroundings however I feel the film lacked depth both in plot and ending. I did however like it's artistic approach and the fact that the alien became more human as the film progressed.

The story of my short film, Human, focuses on an alien moving to London and loving it's new surroundings. He loves both the natural elements and the way in which humans utilise these. The short film is artistic in terms of imagery combined with inner thought voice over and a cover by the actor of Pink Floyd's, Wish You Were Here, with relevant lyrics and accent to imply the protagonist is an alien. As with most of my films, I like to have a major plot twist at the end.

I wrote the screenplay to keep ambiguity of who the main character is and most of all keep his real identity hidden until the last moment. Even when it is explicitly implied that an alien lurks beneath the human skin of the protagonist, I still did not want to ruin the artistic feel of the film by stating so. Instead I have added a scary but ambiguous "alien/monster" noise at the end of the film.

As director, I tried to get as many variations of shots and voice recordings as possible to allow as much choice as possible for when I reached the post-production stages. The most challenging shot to film was the 90 second continuous shot towards the end of the film. Even on our final take that was used in the film there are still mistakes and imperfections I would have preferred to eradicate with another take but unfortunately this was not possible due to the availability of our actors. I was very pleased with the variety of shots recorded by the cameraman and extremely pleased with the lighting effect we trialed for the sinister shot of the alien at the end of the film, also used for the flash frames.

Before editing, I went through the process of media managing our footage and audio, as well as audio syncing with most of the clips in order to speed up the editing process, as well as achieving a more organised and efficient edit. I organised these into different bins to separate the different settings and sounds, including voice over and background music.

I thoroughly enjoyed the use of sound and imagery in Human, and the outcome was a film I am proud to have directed and edited, as it turned out the exact way I intended when writing it. I then exported it in the Vimeo recommended guidelines, uploaded it to my channel on the site and this allowed me to easily share it with all involved and interested in viewing the film, including sharing it on Facebook. The feedback I have received has been very positive both from peers and professional contacts I have and I now feel very confident I could successfully produce another short film, in particular a re-make of our final first year short film, Green-Eyed monster.

Link: https://vimeo.com/93488003