IMP

crew

director • producer • DOP • editor - Ivantiy Novak

writer - Will Tusker

AD - Sasha Thomas

cast

Ulenspiegel - Rolando Montecalvo

The Preacher - Will Tusker

the project

A short film about a young man who sells his life to sort his problems. 

This was an independent guerrilla shoot, photographed entirely in 2 days. 

Movement was established over a series of workshops, relying principally on the Malmgren-Laban system as well as Vakhtangov’s technique in object transformation. Because the text is entirely in verse, spoken as a monologue, I relied on the actors’ physical action to counterbalance speech, and the a-rhythmic silence of the protagonist to represent the Faustian pact being made. We worked extensively with props and garments to thread the text into the material space within the frame, as well as to expose how our protagonist’s internal state penetrates into the world surrounding him. 

Visually I borrowed from German expressionism as well as the work of Yuri Norstein, opting for dirty shots and a discoloured aesthetic to deal with the concepts of corruption, fragmentation and despair, while shooting with a Helios 58mm and a vintage 200mm Pentax lens allowed me to capture the idea of a man out of time. Charles Gounod’s Faust (1859) opera was equally vital in echoing the story’s archetypal core.