
by Bri Castellini
Despite my being an incredibly dramatic person, drama tends to not be my artistic style. I’m a comedy person.
But then I met Colin Hinckley, who loves drama and, specifically, horror. And we decided to write a horror film together called Buy In, a tense character study about capitalism and power and desperation, so when it came time for me, the director, to make decisions about the look of this project, I was more than a little nervous. And then I had a few ideas and then we shot the film and now we’re preparing to release it into the world at the end of a crowdfunding campaign (more on that later, but spoiler alert- we’re 62% funded!).
…I wanted to share some of my directing choices, because I think it was a great educational opportunity for me, a person who prefers fast talking comedies, to learn how to slow things down and use the camera more strategically than normally.
Power
A big theme in this film is the power different people wield, and no one is more powerful than Marc, the salesman, played by Marshall Taylor Thurman.
Marshall is 6′ 5″, which is an inhuman and absurd height, but also worked in our favor. Colin, who plays Roger, is naturally shorter and less broad shouldered, and we wanted to emphasize that as much as we could. To begin with, we tried to shoot Marshall from really low angles to emphasize his height and size. I wanted the audience to feel him towering over Roger and, as a result, us.
Even when he’s sitting, I wanted him to feel big. To take up more space. To get uncomfortably close the the camera as he rattled off his sales pitch….
Read it all, complete with more very cool and informative pictures, at medium.com
Bri Castellini is TVWriter™’s favorite indie web series maker in the world, period. She also does a lot of other things, or as Bri puts it, she’s a “Writer, filmmaker, adjunct prof, and human bulldozer from NYC.” Learn more at www.BriCastellini.com