Story-Telling: Tell (short film)

Tell is a short film by Ryan Connolly. The film centres around a man named Taylor who, during an argument, murders his girlfriend Jenny. It's loosely based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe called "The Tell-Tale Heart".

Who is Ryan Connolly?

Ryan Connolly is an American writer, director, producer and editor. He is mostly well known for his short films Losses (2011), Tell (2012), PROXiMITY (2013), U.F.Oh Yeah (2015) and Portal Combat (2015). He also recently worked with short film director Seth Worley to create Real Gone (2015), which I have written about in another blog. Ryan is also know for creating the YouTube series Film Riot, a collection of videos about the art of filmmaking. I first discovered Film Riot about 3 years ago and it's where I learnt everything I know about filmmaking. Ryan Connolly, in my opinion, is an incredible man because he has dedicated his time to teaching others what he has learnt as a filmmaker. For over five years now all of there over 700,000 subscribes have followed him as he has worked his way up the industry ladder, and along the way he has taught us everything he knows and even more.

Tell (2012)

Whilst looking at Tell I only focused on the first two and a half minutes (the pre-title sequence) because my own piece is only going to be about two minutes long. The opening of this film sets up the entire 30 minute story. The sequence begins with Taylor and Jenny arguing. Jenny is asking Taylor lots of questions about where he goes because he disappears all the time. Taylor walks away from her and heads outside to his car. He gets a hammer out of the boot. He then heads back inside and attacks Jenny, killing her. I love the way this scene was shot. After Taylor walks out, the rest of the scene is done in one stedi-cam shot. As Taylor goes back into the house, the camera slowly heads in behind him, going through the house and into the kitchen. We do not see Taylor attack Jenny, we only hear it and see the aftermath. The scene is a brilliant piece of filmmaking and I love it, hence why I've chosen to focus on it during the pre-production for my own film. I love how Ryan was able to fit the entire set-up plot for the film into the first two minutes in such an effective way. I will take inspiration from this when producing my own film to ensure I can fit as much as possible into the first two minutes.