There’s an art to making a powerful short film, and it’s a difficult one to master.
A well-made short film – that is to say, a piece of stand-alone cinema with a run-time of under 40 minutes – calls for a far different sensibility in the director’s chair than what is required for a feature film.
You’re not cramming a feature film’s worth of ideas, themes, story, characters and images into five or ten minutes. Instead, an effective short film will strategically explore a single idea to a natural conclusion that echoes long after the film is over.
I’m absolutely wild for short films. Luckily for me (and those with similar appetites), Vancouver – with its high concentration of fearless film students and multi-tasking showbiz professionals – is a hotbed for boundary-pushing micro cinema.
Vancouver’s dynamic short film industry will be showcased in the fifth annual Vancouver Short Film Festival (VSFF), which runs this weekend and features 17 short films in six screenings – including Through the Pane, a primo example of an elegantly executed short film.
The short marks the writing and directorial debut of Pauline Egan, the Australian-born, Vancouver-based actress best known for her role as a Lycan scientist on Sanctuary.
In Through the Pane – which stars Egan and Motive and Stargate Universe actor Louis Ferreira – a man and woman build a relationship from opposite sides of a courtyard, communicating via the pieces of paper that they flash at each other from their respective windows.
It's a riff on the loneliness that is often part and parcel of urban living, according to Egan.
“I used to sit by the window and play my piano, and there was an apartment across the way, and I’d play and think about all these parallel lives around me,” says Egan. “That idea fascinated me, that we’re living these lives above, below, and around each other, and we don’t know what is going on, and who could be there.”
Egan employs an array of silent-film tropes in Through the Pane, to maximum impact. The characters don’t exchange any spoken dialogue; their interactions are accompanied by an evocative musical score, composed by BAFTA-nominee Sam Hulick; the whole shebang is shot in brilliant black and white.
“I didn’t want to make it fancy or add any bells and whistles to take away from the pure human interaction,” says Egan, “So if I made it silent and made it black and white, the music became almost a third character.”
The busy actress was compelled to make this short film, in part, in order to see how well the writing, producing, and directing hats would fit on her head. This meant she was actively engaged in the project from concept to completion, and juggled three hats during filming.
“Creatively, as an actor, I can’t even begin to explain how much more it all makes sense to me now,” says Egan. “As a person, it proved to me that I could do it, which was a huge personal milestone, and it showed me how many beautiful, talented people there are out there that are willing to help somebody who has a vision.”
Through the Pane was shot in Vancouver over two days last December. Already it’s been an official selection at seven festivals and amassed a long list of awards and accolades, including seven Excellence awards at San Diego’s Best Shorts festival and the Audience Choice award at the Atlanta Shorts fest.
And now, it’ll screen for the hometown crowd as part of VSFF.
“I’ve been so badly wanting to have it screen at something here because this is where it began, and where it was created, and everyone who was involved was living here, and it’s from here,” says Egan, who will soon be seen in television’s Olympus. “This one matters the most to me.”
The Vancouver Short Film Festival runs Nov. 14-16 at the Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour). For tickets and full schedule information, visit VSFF.com.
