After a mass shooting at a university, a security guard returns to work the night shift, to be haunted by the ghost of the dead killer and the lives lost that night.
This was part of a collaborative project, where my role included: Acting, Set Design & Lighting
Since my youth I’ve loved method acting—seeing the behind-the-scenes of actors using personal experiences or visual research to evoke the emotions presented in their characters. Thus, to prepare for my acting scenes I methodically studied the emotions of anger and disjointed gestures of the zombies from The Walking Dead and the victim’s expression of shock in the iconic shower death scene in Psycho.
Filmed in the media faculty staff room, the goal was to transform this space into the Night Guard’s headquarters. To gain inspiration, I visited the on campus security rooms, where it appeared disheveled and unkempt, and jotted down key features that I could replicate. Props such as walkie talkies were readily available in the staff room which I utilised. Any extra props that I felt would enhance the set design were then brought onto the set such as panadol packets, scattered papers and folders and batteries. These were dispersed methodically to imitate the fragmented mentality of a security guard.
Later on in the film, the audience witnesses a memorial on the notice board in the hallway commemorating the dead. Taking inspiration from Youtube documentaries that presented floral wreaths around photographs and plaques of fallen American soldiers, I adapted this way of honouring the dead by using a floral necklace and artificial roses to create a wreath to encompass all the headshots of students who had passed away. By doing so, it paid homage to not only the fictional characters in the film, but also the real lives that have been taken in school shootings around the world.
To capture the aura of the spirits post-school shooting, Leland (fellow film student and friend) and I guided a flashlight using a floating motion through the printer room towards the main protagonist. In the later scenes we used blue and red cellophane encased mood lights to distinguish the spirits—red being the shooter and blue being the victims.
