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CREATIVITY

Watch This Tense And Awkward Short Film, Shot in One Take By Drone

“At The End of the Cul-de-sac” is a creepy short film that depicts a mental breakdown in suburbia, but it’s really about how society reacts to spectacle now.

Watch This Tense And Awkward Short Film, Shot in One Take By Drone

BY Joe Berkowitz1 minute read

WHAT: A voyeuristic short that appears to be about a man’s mental breakdown, but actually has a lot more on its mind.

WHO: New York-based filmmaker Paul Trillo.

WHY WE CARE: A lot has been said about the public shaming of people like Justine Sacco, who fired off a gross tweet before getting on a plane and found herself newly jobless by the time she landed. Jon Ronson wrote a fascinating book about these kinds of phenomena. The latest season of Black Mirror tackled them in a fantastic episode too. But perhaps nothing has made a more succinct statement on the merging of technology and lynch mob mentality than the new short film, At The End of the Cul-de-Sac. Creator Paul Trillo uses a showoff-y, tech-angle format of shooting on a drone in a single, unbroken take to tell a story about public scrutiny . . . that isn’t the story you think it as at first. The camera–floating eerily, like a disembodied spirit–captures a man pitching a fit outside the unbudging front door of a woman named Susan. A neighborly crowd gathers as his rant becomes more unhinged. Around seven minutes in, things take a turn, but the entire film is designed, in every regard, to provoke maximum discomfort. “I can’t tell if this is getting interesting or tedious,” a gawking bystander says at one point, filming the incident on his phone. You won’t have the same issue.

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Have a look below at the making-of video.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe Berkowitz is an opinion columnist at Fast Company. His latest book, American Cheese: An Indulgent Odyssey Through the Artisan Cheese World, is available from Harper Perennial. More


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