Short Film Review: "Place"

The short film “Place,” written and directed by Jason Gudasz, is an eleven-minute film about moving into a new home and how the weird spirits in the house affect each character. Gudasz’s usual films have a comedic background, but here he uses dark comedy to get both horror and comedy aspects across. Gudasz says, “I just wanted to try horror and to make it funny if I could”. This film and Jason’s work did a really good job fitting into both categories.

I really liked the way he used the layout of the set and different camera angels to show such an open space. The way you are able to see through into multiple rooms at once was an interesting aspect of directing that worked really well. For example,` at 1:09 you can hear the boyfriend talking in another room from afar but the camera and actions are focused on the little girl. Another example of this was at 6:37 when Stella was walking around and talking in the background in a different room, while Lauren and her boyfriend Greg were also talking in the foreground.

Music and sound effects were a large aspect of the film. At the start and end of the film, the music was a sort of techno-beat with heavy out of breath breathing in front of it. This was an interesting music choice that worked really well. He also made people’s voices turn into deep male horror-like voices during normal conversations about everyday things. Dark comedy is used whenever they have normal conversations with the deep scary effects on their voices because if you listen to the words they are saying they are not intimidating its just the aspect of the scary voice. I think this was an important comedy aspect to the horror like the plot. Gudasz also used certain background music for each character and their spirit which was unique and really stood out to me. Lauren was staring at herself in the mirror and talking to ‘herself’ but it was a mirror-spirit version of her with a deeper voice and that is a good example of both the normal conversations with scary voices but also here Jason uses reflection.

Camera-wise, Gudasz used many rule of thirds shots and slow motion as well. The slow-motion in the first scene of the family running into the new house was a very strong opening. Around 2:25 we see a slow zoom in onto Stella. By zooming and having the mysterious music in the background creates a certain ominous mood and vibe that Gudasz wants us to get. It helps create the story. I noticed that there were a lot of quickly cut off and short camera movements instead of dollying, panning, or trucking. There would be a scene shot from one angle and then it would to the next scene by cutting. Characters would move in and out of the frame instead of having the camera movements follow them. It just had shorts clips and the camera seemed to never move.

I really enjoyed watching this short film especially being able to depict the camera movements and angles and being able to see how uniquely this film was done compared to others.

To watch the short film, the link is below

https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2020/09/16/place/