Evaluation

My single camera production Voodoo is not a

conventional horror, instead looking inwards, focusing on
the fragile and easily corruptible mind of a teenager. This
decision was influenced by the previous success of
psychological horrors Moon (Douglas Jones) and TVs
Breaking Bad have had creating intense atmospheres by
focusing attention primarily on their protagonists
deteriorating minds.
Voodoo tells a simple story, showing to us the boring life
of an antisocial teenager and how he reacts to finding a
possessed book that has the power to kill people.
The plot is entirely built around the name-less protagonist
character, and the introductory montage (from 0:49 to
1:06) uses a number of techniques to establish his
characteristics as well as the tone of the overall film,
allowing the audience to learn a lot about him and his daily
life in a very short amount of screen time. The purpose of
similar montages in The Godfather the montage indicates
the passage of time, compressing the bulk of one days
events into only around 40 seconds. As well as this,
Voodoo conveys to the audience that these events play
out almost identically every day for the protagonist.
Within the montage, jump cuts are also employed, and as
with John-Luc Godards Breathless, they are there to
drive home to the audience the boring, monotonous
passage of time in which very little is happening to our
protagonist, and they are passively allowing things to
happen around them rather than participating in events.
Similarly to Edgar Wright in his films such as Shaun of the
Dead, I used quick-cutting a match-on-action cuts to
present mundane tasks and occurrences to my audience in
a way that is visually interesting. However, in contrast to
his use of the technique, it is used to create a depressing
atmosphere as opposed to comic.

The 180 degree rule was also employed to avoid confusing

the audience, and as in the infamous The Birth of A
Nation is used to quickly establish the positioning and
geography of scenes. After showing the protagonist walking
to school from left to right of screen, it is clear that he is
walking back home when he leaves school and walks from
right to left of screen.
For several shots, the focus was softened for dramatic
effect, so that we can see the screen of the protagonist but
dont know exactly what it is hes looking at until it is
revealed by being brought into sharper focus.
The production is an open ended single drama, as opposed
to being one episode of a series or a clip of a longer film.
This is because it has its own self-contained story with a
clear beginning, middle and end telling the entire story that
it is intended to tell. It ends on a cliff-hanger for effect, as a
way of bringing the short film to a close dramatically and
leaving the fate of the protagonist ambiguous, rather than
because the story is incomplete.
The short has a non-linear structure, beginning with a news
report that describes hundreds of unexplained deaths,
before flashing back to show the audience what was the
cause of all of the deaths.
The story is slowly built up to its climax. The opening flashforward news clip teases at the climax, creating an
atmosphere of anticipation and suspense, before we even
know who the protagonist is. When we therefore do see
him, going about his daily life, we know what he is going to
do, although not how, creating dramatic irony and
anticipation for what is still to come. When he discovers the
book, we still dont know what is going to happen, we stay
intrigued as we know from the music and editing that this
book must be significant to the plot. Returning to his room,
the protagonist looks over the book, and we find out from
the how to use it rules written in the cover how it is that

our protagonist will be involved in bringing about all the

deaths. When he brushes it to one side dismissively, again
dramatic irony is created because the audience know that
it is inevitable that he picks it up again and kills these
people. It is for this reason that when he writes the first
name in the book, and looks at his watch awaiting the
outcome, we fade to black knowing fully that he has killed
the man, without having to see the protagonist find this out
in the news, as Ringo Cyrus was mentioned as the first
to fall in the opening scene. Fading back in from black, we
can immediately tell that time has passed between scenes,
because of the change in lighting and slow fading
transitions. Seeing the hundreds of names he has written
only confirms what the audience already knows. We see
him fall apart emotionally, and destroy the book in
desperation. In the final scene, when he sees the book has
returned to his desk in one piece, we know this must be
another supernatural occurrence because of seeing it
totally destroyed in detail. The protagonist looks blankly at
the book, and we anticipate another breakdown or intense
reaction, but see nothing else there is only a cut to black
and the credits, leaving us as an audience suddenly not
knowing what happened, wondering, having been onestep-ahead of our protagonist for the entirety of the film
until that final scene.
Because of its supernatural narrative, based entirely
around a book with the power to remotely kill people with
only their names, it is anti-realist the events could not
possibly happen in real life.
For the majority of filming, I did not have access to good
sound recording equipment, so the little dialogue in my
original script was intended to be recorded and added in
post-production, with music being used to cover up the
absence of atmospheric and Foley sound recorded on
location. When it got to editing the movie in postproduction, I decided that the spoken dialogue was surplus

to requirement, that all the necessary exposition to further

the plot not already conveyed through the opening
montage could be told by text-on-screen. I then decided
that I liked the creeping atmosphere created by the piece
being devoid of dialogue. This decision didnt last when I
decided that an additional scene needed to be added, a
news reader giving additional information that made the
story more easily comprehensible. Despite this addition of
dialogue back into the film, I think that having it come from
another source and allowing the protagonist to remain
mute maintained this, getting the best of both worlds.