Submerged was an expression of my current self in 2021, like my previous works throughout the year, I have continued to express, explore, and develop my skills within film making. I wanted to explore another film with a narrative, but as the work developed and I continued to experiment and explore myself I found that the piece was better without any dialog in audio or text form. The piece was originally intended to be an exploration of myself in various tones of how I view myself but due to some events over this past year and my own mental state the short film piece became a visual extension of myself that I cannot express with words or emotions.

Submerged is my 3rd short film and the second film in my collection where I take a centre role as the main actor and subject. The footage within this piece is shot using both a DSLR and a new piece of kit I have not worked with before. A GoPro, and while researching about how to use the new camera I found footage that looked almost cinematic. Through further research I found that within Adobe Premier pro there are file formats and editing approaches to change the quality of your footage to appear more cinematic. I liked this new approach to my film making so with further development all the footage shot on the GoPro is edited with a blue camera filter tint from within Adobe Premiere pro’s camera effects folder to create cinematic shots. The use of this blue filter is to increase my camera quality but also to add a shaper more defined approach to film making I have not explored before. All the footage taken on this GoPro is shown as a collective visual that represents the words I cannot speak, the cropped view and represented black outline of the first visuals are to represent a prison, cage, or a singular viewpoint that I explored within my last piece “2020” and this only shows part of the visual as unintroduced narrative start.

Most of the acting footage and scenic footage was shot in Newbury, Berkshire on and around the Wellford estate. The visual use of water is a representation of how I feel my mind is currently submerged with no direction or explanation. The short film also begins the same way. The audience is just thrown into this strange loud visual that is cropped and presented small as a visual introduction; as explored within my last piece 2020, this small, cropped view is a window. A window into my subconscious. The monotone, black and white visuals are to represent this lost connection I have with the world as recently my friend tragically ended his own life this year within his own bathroom. In essence it is a form of closure and a wanted answer to a never to be explained question of why. I use myself as the subject and conveyer about both this and a reminder the work is about me. I have not really used myself as the subject before or as an actor; though I feel natural being in view of a camera it was quite odd to be the centre of my piece and to be directing someone else how I would like to see this be executed visually.

Though this work was originally intended to be a narrative driven piece, the current outcome of my short film relies heavily on the visual that is accompanied by related sounds. My experimentation and exploration of my researched artists has heavily influenced the way in which I thoughtfully directed and shot these spaces and scenes. I use audio recorded in real time with the footage from the spaces they were shot in as a transition between visuals.

The sensual use of colour within the visuals along with sound convey the emotional contextual language to the audience I physically, mentally cannot and my work is left open to interpretation.