Caden Tsang AFP

Quiet Tears

Logline: Struggling with his mother's death, a young man battles the journey of depression and faces the challenges of grief. 

A young man has recently lost his mother. Isolated and overwhelmed, the young man is battling the journey of depression. Despite receiving messages and support from friends, he chooses to ignore them and faces the massive challenges of grief.

During my initial brainstorming of possible ideas that I could use to create a film based on subjectivity, I landed on using themes such as grief and loss to create a short film which fits the main theme of subjectivity. I wanted to create a film that conveys strong emotions to the viewer through the use of lighting and different shooting techniques. As the Cinematographer in this film, I had to think about important elements such as lighting and angles. I filmed the entire film in midtone lighting to represent the sad genre of this film as well as to portray Scott's depressed mind. I also utilised backlit lighting in a lot of shots which helped add a sense of isolation which emphasizes Scott's internal struggles after the death of his Mother. It did this by putting more focus on Scott through the contrast of lighting from the character and the background.