I shot five short films the summer before last for a miniseries I’m making called Summer Stories. It’s hard to comprehend how I did this, considering that this past summer I only managed to shoot one short, but basically I just didn’t sleep much and spent every weekend on day-long shoots. Editing these films has taken much longer than shooting them did and I still have two shorts to finish up, but here’s my most recent completion, The Square of Grass.
Hequet is the fourth episode in my web miniseries Summer Stories, and my latest attempt at telling a story with images and sounds only. With this silent style of filmmaking, strong composition, music cues and actor’s movement and facial expressions are key to telling the story. This style of film storytelling has always appealed to me because it places so much emphasis on the cinematography and forces the viewer to engage with the story in a creative way–they have to piece the story together themselves rather than it being handed to them on an exposition platter. I’ve always enjoyed mystery in stories, leaving some of the big questions unanswered, and Hequet is no exception. What happened to the man’s wife? Is the statue really a supernatural entity or just in the man’s head? Who is the mysterious masked woman? Well, that question at least can be answered by watching Summer Stories Episode 3.
I hope you enjoy Hequet, and maybe even get a little spooked in the process! It was certainly a joy to create.