8010 Felix Bayly 10802 NEA Evaluation

Short films are special because they “give new filmmakers a chance to learn their craft, find their
cinematic voice and to see how audiences respond to their work” (BFI)1. The compressed form factor
of shorts forces the filmmaker to distil their cinematic voice: Some shorts, like Slap and The Ellington
Kid, aim to tell contained micro-narratives, while others, like Operator or Echo, are snapshots of
larger story. I wanted my film to be in the middle, and tell a contained narrative, that still left plenty
unsaid.

How the Real World Works follows a young protagonist’s first day at the office. We follow them as
they become increasingly perturbed and distraught as they struggle to understand the surreal goings
on of their new job. I was influenced by Nick Rowland’s choice in Slap to follow the emotional
journey of a young protagonist, but where Rowland chose a natural and realistic aesthetic, I opted
for expressionistic and surreal one. I chose to be expressionistic as I wanted to convey the inner
emotions of my protagonist, and I chose to do so through surreal imagery as this fits the emotions I
wanted to represent: the sense of being overwhelmed with confusion, discomfort, and anxiety. The
surrealistic aesthetic is created with a mixture of irrational juxtaposition and spatial incoherence,
and I tried to be expressionistic in every microelement to best represent my Protagonist’s mood.

In the cinematography, I used dolly-zooms when the Protagonist is running to create the sense of an
infinite corridor, externally showing the Protagonist’s internal feeling that she is lost in this infinitely
large, corporate, adult world. To expand on this feeling of being smothered by an infinite, corporate
system I used shots in which the camera is being submerged.
8010 Felix Bayly 10802 NEA Evaluation

I also mixed using a stationary camera and handheld camera to indicate mood in different
sequences. In the opening sequence, I used a handheld camera to create a more analogue aesthetic,
to contrast this with the rigid and digital camera angles of the office. I emphasised this with a light
filter, vignette, and grain, all adding to the sense that home is a place of happiness. The handheld

cinematography is like a lot of scenes in Echo, but Lewis

Arnold uses shaky-cam to communicate panic and stress, the opposite of the emotions I wanted to
create. What differentiates Arnold’s shaky-cam and mine is the fast pace of his edit, whereas I opted
for long takes. This is what makes his shakiness panic-inducing, where the preferred reading of mine
is calm and comforting.

This difference is furthered by Arnold’s cold, stark colour palette and my warm and yellow one.
Caroline in Echo wears black, white, and blue, whereas the Protagonist in my film wears a yellow
jumper (which she loses when she enters the workplace – indicating a shift in mood). I also colour-
graded my footage to be warm and cosy, by boosting the red channel, whereas Arnold graded his to
achieve the cold and grey aesthetic. To contrast the opening sequence with the shots in the office, I
boosted the green and blue channels, creating a cold and lifeless corporate aesthetic that was
inspired by Echo, The Double and The Matrix.
8010 Felix Bayly 10802 NEA Evaluation

During production, audiences I tested the printer scene with where unhappy with the colour of the
‘printer-ink.’ The main story-point revolves on the Protagonist thinking that the printer-ink could be
blood, but the redness of the blood was not adequately showing up on camera. To fix this, I used a
colour grade mask to selectively increase the redness of the liquid, making the encoded reading
easier for the spectator to decode.

Mise-en-scene also contributes to the expressionistic aesthetic. I shot in a real office, which is not
very expressionistic but does create contrast with the surreal events. The expressionistic mise-en-
scene is more seen in running sequences, where the Protagonist stumbles into an empty office floor,
a location which I also stumbled into during production. I used this unexplained empty space to add
to the sense of confusion the protagonist was feeling, but also to symbolise how she feels she is lost
in a vast alien world that she does not understand, devoid of humanity.

The prop of the Newton’s cradle, feeds into the theme of confusion about the corporate world. I
chose the Newton’s cradle to be prevalent imagery as it is the most generic desk ornament,
suggesting the corporate world is devoid of individuality. It also has a perpetual routine ticking,
which becomes incredibly annoying and stressful after a few minutes. This mirrors how the
Protagonist finds the perpetual routine of adult life stressful after only a few minutes.
8010 Felix Bayly 10802 NEA Evaluation

Moreover, I made sure to incorporate the diegetic clacking of the cradle into my non-diegetic score.
This emphasised the themes that the cradle represented, and I worked with a musician to increase
the rate of the clacking when I wanted there to be an increase stress. I also used other non-diegetic
sound cues to prompt responses from the audience. When the Protagonist cuddles with the dog, I
added sounds from an anti-anxiety sound generator, and when the Boss speaks, I added a Shepard
tone, a noise that increases stress. My use of stress-inducing diegetic and non-diegetic sound was
influenced by The Fly; non-diegetic stress-inducing sound is played over the title card, and diegetic
sound, like the blaring of the car horn, is used to increase tension.

Naturalist films often use continuity editing, an editing style that follows certain rules to create “a
consistency of time and space”3. Despite my expressionistic aesthetic, I often followed these rules,
because as Schoonmaker points out above, adhering to continuity editing can be the only way to tell
a coherent story. I was adamant that despite the bizarre and surreal events, the spectator should
still be able to follow and empathise with the Protagonist as they are plunged into this strange
corporate world and understand when they eventual choose to adopt it.
8010 Felix Bayly 10802 NEA Evaluation

Dan Sully using a match-on-action in The A similar match-on-action in

Ellington Kid. my film

That being said, I made sure to break the rules of continuity editing whenever I wanted to increase
the spectator’s feelings of unease and confusion. Williams does this frequently in The Fly, although
he does this to convey the driver’s panic and frustration, whereas I break the rules to convey my
Protagonist’s feelings of unease, discomfort, and confusion.

Williams chooses to break the 180-degree I break the 180-degree rule to

rule to increase the sense of panic in The Fly. add to the sense of unease.

Despite an expressionistic and surreal aesthetic, my narrative conforms to convention. It aligns with
Syd Field’s Paradigm, the idea that all stories are told in three acts: the set-up, confrontation, and
resolution. The story is set up by the mother’s note and the brief conversation with the Boss, the
confrontation is found when the Protagonist sees the printer ink and furthered by her second
conversation with the Boss, and the resolution is seen with her final decision at the doorway. I could
have chosen a more subversive narrative, like Over, which tells the story in reverse-chronological
order, but I opted to adhere to Field’s Paradigm, making my film structurally similar to The Fly. In The
Fly, Olly Williams sets-up the story with a five second voice over, the confrontation starts when the
titular fly appears, and the resolution is seen when the robbers eventually leave the bank. By
following narrative convention, I aimed to provide something for the spectator to hold on to as they
experienced the surreal imagery, prompting them to empathise with the Protagonist. In comparison,
8010 Felix Bayly 10802 NEA Evaluation

when watching an entirely surreal film with no real narrative, like Un Chien Andalou, we do not have
much emotional connection to any of the characters. Being aligned and empathising with the
Protagonist was integral, as I wanted my film to show the anxiety associated with young people
being thrust into adulthood, and how the adult corporate world, makes little sense to younger
people.

The adoption of expressionistic and surreal aesthetic combined with conventional narrative makes
my film had to place in a genre. Rick Altman outlines “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film
Genre”4, stating that films are categorized in genre by the semantics, the microelements, and their
syntactics, the macroelements. As I explained, my film follows surrealist and expressionistic
microelements, meaning on a semantic level it can be placed in the surrealist and expressionistic
genres. But on a syntactic level, the themes of a young protagonist transitioning into adulthood, and
losing a childlike innocence, make How the Real World Works fit into the Coming-Of-Age genre. This
difference between semantic and syntactic genre makes my film like The Fly, which has the semantic
elements of a gritty British gangster film (bank-robbing, toothpick-chewing) but the syntactic
elements of a comedy (over-zealous reaction to mundane situation, silly premise, expected audience
response of laughter).

Word count: 1499.

8010 Felix Bayly 10802 NEA Evaluation

1. https://www2.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/bfi-definition-of-specialised-film-
bfi-neighbourhood-cinema.pdf
2. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/dec/05/thelma-schoonmaker-a-matter-of-life-
and-death-scorsese-powell-and-pressburger
3. The Healthy Edit - Creative Editing Techniques for Perfecting Your Movie – John Rosenberg
4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1225093