I remember when in high school we got a list of films to watch, and were asked to interpret one of them in class. I remember that assignment and the film Vanishing Point (1971). Then and there I found an enormous desire to impart and extract meaning from the pictures I see, to search them for a commentary on reality and a key to a deeper understanding of it. For years I have been further developing my ability to analyze and write engaging stories, but also to turn them into moving pictures – among other by studying philosophy and then studying at the Warsaw Film School.
A short thriller, a retro-futuristic Western, and at the same time my final work on a course at the Warsaw Film School. I am particularly proud of how it expanded my skills in managing a collective project, in creative teamwork, in reconciling – often conflicting – ideas put forth by different people and maintaining a coherent vision through it all.
For a long time I had dreamed of filming an American stylized dark Western in a Polish landscape, so at an early stage I suggested this direction to Justyna and Paweł, who were to work with me on the film. While writing the script, I tried to make it convey motives that seemed particularly appropriate to this project:
• constant discomfort, anxiousness and a sense of loneliness that arises when we one is forced to endlessly fight for survival in difficult conditions (literally or metaphorically)
• arising questions about real threats that evade our perception, but also about the illusory threats that the same, finite and limited perception so easily imposes on us
• the harm that one can inflict on herself by fixating on a self-created vision of reality and stubbornly fighting for what in that perspective seems infinitely right
Excerpt from the script:
John takes a crowbar and a bag from the pickup truck. Together with Peter they struggle with the shelter door, from behind which a baby is crying. Eventually the door slams open. Peter goes inside. You can hear the sound of the plastic airproof cover being cut and hissing of air.
As the door swing fully open and the dust settles, Anna can be seen in the background behind it. John notices her. They stare at each other's eyes. They both wait for the opponent to move. Anna is panting very hard, she is gasping for air. You can hear she barely can breathe.
Nevertheless, she tightens her hand on the poker and lunges at John. He jumps aside and Anna falls. She gets up quickly, although you can see that she is losing strength. Anna's next attack is blocked by John with his crowbar. They struggle, but constantly losing air and blood, Anna loses this duel. John manages to disarm her, Anna collapses from exhaustion.
Slowly losing consciousness, Anna notices Peter behind John’s back, who is holding the baby and calming it down. With his free hand, Peter gives John a bag, from which John grabs an oxygen mask and puts it on Anna's face. She drops unconscious.
These motives seemed to fit neatly with both the Western and the thriller-horror quality of the story. While writing, I have also implemented a number of ideas resulting from brainstorming with the rest of the team, such as e.g. Justyna’s and Paweł's suggestions that we should make space for the relationship between the mother and the child in this harsh survival struggle. This relationship later turned out to be very important to the story. We also had to factor in an additional requirement imposed on us by the school: that the film should be either devoid of any music or devoid of any dialogue. We chose to avoid dialogue, which we treated as a further challenge to tell an even more subtle and intimate story.
This requirement inspired the idea for air pollution, as well as masks that hinder communication and, as a result, the transfer of the entire plot to an imaginary, retrofuturistic world of an alternative Wild West, in which the industrial revolution happened earlier, more dynamically and even more destructively to the environment.
Due to a change of the person responsible for cinematography, I was also forced to finish planning and drawing most of the storyboard myself – while of course showing and consulting it with our new cinematographer. During the entire pre-production, also when co-creating a coherent visual concept, three things were most important to me: that the story we were telling was suspenseful, comprehensible and consistent, and that what we planned was possible to implement and looked as credible as possible.
After we cast Wiktoria Czubaszek in the leading role, in addition to the script, I prepared a short biography for her character. As the role was to be silent, it seemed particularly important to discuss the heroine's past experiences in detail. Together, we worked on the script, discussing in detail Anna's path in the story, so that, despite the lack of dialogue, her emotions were clear and her motivations were easy to understand.
Together with Jerzy Tyszkiewicz, we prepared the final fight choreography. We tried to reconcile spectacularity with safety of its execution, and we practiced it in rehearsals. I have paid extra care to creating a symbolic Western moment of a “quick draw” duel and an impression mutual suspenseful distrust – which was in line with the motive of obscured intentions. It was equally important at this point in the film to show Anna's newly acquired ruthlessness – while sticking to the ambiguity of the intruders' behavior. The plot relied on keeping the viewer convinced that the intruders are the villains, but also that after we learn the end of the film, on second watch we could believe that their actions actually fit in with quite innocent intentions.
Therefore, their defense against Anna's attacks had to be open to being interpreted as nonchalance, overpowering her had to be open to being seen as necessary self-defense, and Anna’s loss of consciousness had to unintentionally result from her own actions. In this sense, the structure of the fight repeats the theme of the film – showing Anna's belief in the necessity for her fight, and at the same time giving the viewer space for reflection that with time the heroine becomes the main victim of her own obsession.
When it was time for set design, props and costumes, I knew that we had to be careful about the traps we had set for ourselves by choosing this particular setting. On the one hand, there was a risk that an overly stereotypical Western look could turn it into a parody of itself and seem dishonest. On the other hand, we knew that we are filming in Poland, so too timidly representing the American Western tropes could mean that these references would become illegible or, worse, be acknowledged by the viewer, but seem random, unconvincing or inconsistent.
To solve this problem, wherever possible, we tried to look for what is common between Poland and the historic north USA. We chose items and clothes that balance the thin line between an era-stylized and an ordinary, functional appearance, and above all we aimed for what looked the most timeless to us.
Together with the costume designer, we decided that the look of the main character, Anna, should be an indirect but clear tribute to the famous hero of Sergio Leone's classic Westerns played by Clint Eastwood, and that the costumes of her adversaries will be a bit darker, but also more contemporary. This was supposed to emphasize the subtle but noticeable difference of the worlds from which the opposing sides come. The masks of the intruders were supposed to cover their eyes to further dehumanize them and increase the sense of their anonymity and the impossibility to know their intentions.
One of the props that I had to make myself was Anna's mask. We knew Wiktoria would spend a large part of the film wearing it, so to enable her to act we had to leave as much of her face as possible (most importantly the eyes) uncovered. Anna's mask had to be both more interesting (so to gain the viewer's favor even more easily in such a short film), but also a bit more outdated than the intruder's masks (to emphasize the impression of their power advantage).
Due to the relatively low budget (we financed the film with our private funds) we could only afford several shooting days. This created the need for careful planning and flexibility during filming. Due to the fact that among our team I had the most experience in film editing, we had previously agreed that I would be responsible for it – that's why, already on the set, I was making especially sure that all the necessary shots are shot, so that the story could be told, as well as the planned special effects and action scenes could be put together.
In large part I was also responsible for the organizational side and making sure that all the elements fit together properly. Directing on the set was mostly a collaborative job, but I also had opportunities to be a director more individually, especially in the scenes where a holistic view of the project was important – largely due to the fact that I was one of the few who participated in all of preproduction and the fact that I wrote the script. As could be expected, many things did not go according to plan, but thanks to determination and two extra days of shooting, it was possible to complete all the necessary shots.
I believe that in every thriller and horror film the key is the pacing, the variation of emotions and their appropriate positioning so that they play on the viewer's expectations. I had this in mind when I was writing, as well as when I was ensuring the proper tempo on set, but above all during editing. I showed a couple of work-in-progress versions at school, which allowed me to observe and listen to reactions. Here I noticed that the first part of the film, which was supposed to reflect the initial stillness of the heroine’s world, turned out too slow – I made it shorter but cutting out a mini-scene of storing the water, deleting a couple of unnecessary shots and I used more jump cuts.
Originally, we saw Anna doing more in her hideout, but people reacted positively to the scenes with the child, so I cut everything else as short as possible to emphasize this relationship ever more. In the part of the film that preceded the climax, the tension and slow pace of the sneaking worked fairly well, but the action did not seem to accelerate enough when the baby starts to cry. I followed a suggestion for a more abrupt cross cutting of Anna’s and the intruders’ actions, which accelerated the action.
The sound editing was done by Adriano Mantova. When discussing its direction, it was especially important to me that the sound emphasizes the emptiness of the world. I also suggested that Anna's mask makes a constant sound of hydraulic air pumping. Certain doubts were raised by the mask prop being stationary and there being nothing visual to justify any sound, but I was sure that it would not break the suspension of disbelief. The monotonous hiss added dread and emphasized the importance of the mask. It also highlights the moment when Anna drops her mask as well as the terrible silence when it breaks down completely.
Music also posed a challenge. I really wanted it to clearly refer to Sergio Leone's Westerns, to consist of iconic, experimental sounds, jaw harps and to give a characteristic sense of a gallop. At the same time, it had to be significantly darker and more intimate due to the more down-to-earth, realistic and ominous atmosphere of our film. Our budget was too small for us to hire an orchestra. I turned to Olo Olo, a guitarist specializing in — melodically and tonally similar — surf rock music. This way we got appropriate guitar arrangements of "The Slavic March" and "The House of the Rising Sun”, as well as several spontaneous musical motifs for our film.
Then, in close cooperation with Wojciech Bąkowski, we enriched these motifs and melodies with a number of percussion instruments, drums and sounds characteristic for the genre obtained from our own and online resources. While brainstorming with other crew members, an idea came up that during the scene with the child, a typical music box theme would be played in the background, as a music box was also a prop often used in films by Sergio Leone himself. Together with Wojciech, we came to the conclusion that it would be even better if it was the same theme that was heard during the final duel – that it would emphasize the connection between these moments and the relationship with the child, which is, after all, the motivation for Anna in this fight. We digitally transformed the theme recorded by Olo Olo to achieve this effect of a music box.
The portal and channel about board games was also a great opportunity for me to refine my scriptwriting, directing, composition planning and a non-standard approach to film. In the reviews I co-created (often writing most or all of the scenarios), the game-reviewing segments smoothly transition to more classic, cinematic scenes that illustrate the topic in question. It was also an opportunity to practice comedy skills, experiment with genres or prepare less scripted recordings of games – shot simultaneously from multiple cameras. The literal translation of “Wyjdzie w Graniu” is “it will come out in play” and it indirectly refers to a Polish saying about seeing how things really are only as they happen.
As part of the Work & Travel program, I have spent three months working at the famous Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in California (USA), and then a month traveling extensively around the States: California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, the Yellowstone Park, Idaho and New York. During my stay, I recorded and then edited an extensive feature about my journey and emotions. I made it for personal use, but I learned a lot while creating it. Recording it was mostly a spontaneous improvisation with a camera and I perfected my technique during editing. While putting together this project, I was particularly practicing my ability to control the viewer's eyes, field of view and focus when working with quite chaotic input resources. I had also submitted a reworked, short fragment of the coverage (in ) to a film contest by the organization coordinating the W&T programs – Intrax – and with this short version I won the main prize.
I took my first steps in video production and editing as part of this collective. The basic assumption of the initiative started years ago by me and Wojciech Bąkowski was to create a space for unrestricted creativity, experimenting, and playing with music and filmmaking. In addition, we also had the occasional opportunities to produce some commercial and commissioned projects.
