Inspiration.

As part of the process of producing a short film, I thought about how existing products could influence the final outcome of mine, about how the construction of shots and characters would lead me to create my own.

In 2000, Darren Aronofsky directed one of my favourite films ever made, Requiem for a Dream. The film charts three seasons in the lives of Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, Harry’s girlfriend Marion Silver, and Harry’s friend Tyrone. Each character is ultimately destroyed by addiction and self-delusion.


Although this isn't a film noir, I will still use bits of it in my own creation. I admire the film from both a cinematic and a narrative perspective. In order to portray the shift from the objective, community-based narrative to the subjective, isolated state of the characters' perspectives, Aronofsky alternates between extreme closeups and extreme distance from the action and intercuts reality with a character's fantasy.Aronofsky aims to subjectivise emotion, and the effect of his stylistic choices is personalisation rather than alienation.


Aronofsky uses montages of extremely short shots throughout the film. While an average 100-minute film has 600 to 700 cuts, Requiem features more than 2,000. Split-screen is used extensively, along with extremely tight close-ups. Long tracking shots, and time-lapse photography are also prominent stylistic devices. I hope to incorporate some of these styles into my own film.