Back To The Drawing Board

2024

A psycho-thriller short film touching on men's mental health and MK Ultra, a project where illegal human experiments program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken people and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.

Our Story

synopsis

Chen seeks treatment from Dr Webb, a psychiatrist for a complex set of mental health issues, including anxiety, hallucinations, and a history of harmful thoughts. The story unfolds over several weeks of psychopharmacological treatment, involving medication adjustments and therapy sessions.

Despite efforts to address Chen’s conditions, the story takes a tragic turn, and Chen’s mental health deteriorates. He spirals out of control and eventually, he gives in to his biggest desire; hurting people, including the one who loves most, his sickly mother.

The revelation at the end unveils that Dr Webb, was conducting experimental research, using Chen as a test subject to develop a psychopharmacological treatment algorithm. However, the experiment fails, leaving Dr Webb contemplating the need to return to the drawing board.

inspiration

We were inspired by the dark concepts of the film movements: Hong Kong New Wave, German Expressionism, and Surrealism, which sparked ideas revolving around violence, hallucinations, mental challenges, and identity.

We ultimately decided to focus on men's mental health which includes Harm OCD, General Anxiety Disorder, and insomnia, which is what our main character suffers from.

We were also greatly inspired by the MK Ultra, a program run by the CIA that involves the malpractice of ethics and human rights.

challenges

pre-production

One of the challenges we faced involving the film movements was deciding which movement to use in each segment of the film, especially surrealism. It was difficult thinking of the visuals and how to represent the mental health/feelings that Chen felt in each scene.

Using German expressionism came in as a last-minute thing as during one of our test shoots, we realised that German expressionism could be used to represent how exhausted and how paranoid Chen was, along with his state of mind.

Thinking of the execution plan for the entire film was also a challenge as we went in without a proper mock shoot, so were not sure if what we were doing was sufficient/right.

production

Location

One of the major challenges we had was the sudden change of location. We previously aimed to shoot in one of the condo facilities, but due to not having a permit, we were kicked out and were forced to think of another location. Thankfully, the person who lived in the condo lent us his spare room to film. It turned out to be a good choice as the space was smaller and looked more like an office compared to the previous location. Of course, change of location meant we had to adapt the shots on the spot and work, along with the blocking, camera angles, and lighting.

Lighting

Lighting: Due to the space constraints and limited lighting equipment, it was hard to achieve what we originally wanted in each scene. For example, we wanted a heartwarming and warm tone for the house scene, but due to having only one light and one orange gel, it was not as orange as we wanted and hence we had to rely on post-production to bring back the warmth into the scene.

Lighting the bedroom scene was also hard due to the space constraint. We decided to use a house lamp to bring back that warmth, as well as the aperture light as a fill.

Missing Shots

One mistake that we made during the shoot was having missing important shots for the film. For example in the sequence where Chen goes down to buy the medicine for his mom, we forgot to have a shot where Chen is walking normally without the slow shutter speed on. We also forgot to shoot important details such as the bloody tissue in the mom’s hands. With the missing shots, we had to improvise on how to fix it in post. For example, to indicate blood on the tissue, we added a shot of a blood dripping in the next shot.