Thanks for watching, Neil. Glad you enjoyed it!
1) Thanks - I was quite chuffed with how it turned out. I look back on short films I made several years ago and it's a combination of nostalgia and cringing, heh. This one though I'm very pleased with, it's as long as it needs to be (I do hate it when short films are longer than they need to be - I've been guilty of it in the past, so it's always best to trim right to the bone and get to the point), and I'm also very pleased with my compositions - particularly not bad considering I'd never been to the location before, but then after years of doing this sort of thing you develop a quick-hand sense of which shots you can get within a given location. 
2) Aye, Sean (the lead) is trying to break into acting, and he's done lots of short films, stage plays, and so on. He's been in a few of my shorts and I've seen a lot of change from one to the next, but I noticed the biggest leap forward with this one, not just in how he performs the piece, but also in his physicality in-between takes - thinking through his actions and so on. It was a really good experience for me, too, working more closely with an actor - rather than just a friend who's very kindly helping me out for a laugh - so it was a good learning experience, seeing what he needs from me, and for him to know what I need from him.
Likewise Ben (his real-life brother) has done a fair bit of stage acting stuff (albeit more as a hobby from time-to-time). So it was good to work with them together.
Yeah, it was a tricky one doing the strangulation scene. It was very brief in the individual takes, so doing it multiple times allowed me to really extend it much further than it was in any single take. It was tricky to try and get across that sense of asphyxiation - I didn't want Ben (Peter) to black himself out (I asked him to try and rush the blood to his face, holding his breath), and it reads slightly weaker on-camera than it did in-person - but I should note that his hands are tightly bound, so he can't really fight back to effectively ... I could have covered that slightly better, thinking about it, but at the same time we were also fighting the weather (a couple of takes I had to disgard due to wind noise - even with a wind sock over the microphone - as well as rain spray hitting the lens at an inopportune moment/position).
But all-round I'm very pleased with it. There's wasn't much rehearsal or prep time on it either, so it was a very reactive experience - just dive-in and go ... although, of course, Sean did practice his monologue beforehand like any good actor does. Personally, I do tend to side towards a documentary style - in terms of reacting to the moments as they happen. I get the shot I want, the composition, but I'm quite free in letting the scene happen how they feel comfortable with it. A different story might require a different approach to the look (e.g. something very controlled, almost Kubrickian), but I usually gravitate towards these kind of scenarios. 
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Originally Posted by Moon Knight
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