“The Missing Piece” (Short Film)
Sep. 2024
Two friends uncover something supernatural in their living while trying to finish their jigsaw puzzle.
Directed by: Keaton Punch
I used storyboarding software to digitally re-create the room we’d be filming in. This makes it extremely easy to test out any camera angle, position, and blocking for the actors ahead of time.
I lit this scene starting with available daylight shining through the windows, and pushed those levels even further by bouncing light off the ceiling near the windows and above the coffee table.
For the bottomless couch pit effect, we built an elevated prop couch on a table- using foam wrapped in a similar colored fabric. Then we surrounded it with black fabric to make it feel like a dark, endless void.
To give the illusion of me plunging down into the void, I simply laid on the black fabric and moved my body around. We also tied invisible thread to my shirt and tugged on it to simulate air movement.
I put together the puzzle from this film in about 2 hours, and removed the final piece to later paint gold for the end scene. The gold ore was a normal rock I found and brushed gold paint onto.
Check out the behind the scenes from this short film!