IDEA
Every day we walk past people without knowing what they are carrying inside. A face can look completely fine while hiding something painful. That idea was raising awareness for empathy.
The film follows Cata, a young woman from Chile who moves to Germany looking for a fresh start abroad. As she slowly builds a new life, an ordinary moment on the street brings back something she never asked for.
CONCEPT
The film is built around a simple but powerful contrast — the warmth of everyday life and the chaos of painful memory. Visually, emotionally, and in terms of camera work.
The story is told through the perspective of one person supported from a telling voice-over. The audience is meant to feel what Cata feels. The core message is intentionally simple: we never truly know what someone else is going through. And sometimes the smallest act of kindness is enough.
PERSPECTIVES
For the everyday scenes, the camera is calm and steady — wide shots, soft natural light, warm colour grading. Everything feels grounded and open.
For the flashback and trigger sequences, it shifts. Aggressive handheld movement, fast cutting, lighting with isolated red tones, and disorienting close-ups create a visual anxiety-scene. The goal was to let the audience feel the difference.
Different lenses for different perspectives: a wide 16mm for arrival and scale, an 85mm for intimate emotional close-ups, and a Laowa macro lens for one eye-shot. Overall:
CAMERA
Sony Alpha 7 IV
LENSES
Viltrox 16mm F1.8
Laowa 24mm F14 2x Macro
Sigma 24-70mm F2.8
Sony 85mm F1.4
BEHIND THE SCENES
PROCESS
The project started with a beat sheet — the story broken down into 8 emotional moments, from arrival to ending. From there came the shot list, the lighting concept, and a storyboard created with Adobe Firefly. AI was used as a planning tool exclusively in pre-production, not as a replacement for creative decisions.
Everything was shot in one day. 7 locations across Dessau, 11.5 hours including lunch break. The core crew was five people — the rest of the cast joined only for their specific scenes. The weather was overcast throughout the day, which actually worked in our favour — soft, diffused natural light with no harsh shadows.
After two days of reviewing and editing the footage, I went out alone for about two hours to capture establishing shots and nature details that were missing from the edit. The weather stayed consistent, so the footage matched well.
Post-production was done in DaVinci Resolve. The film uses different color-grade approaches but everything is covered with a vignette and a film-noise. I found a couple of sounds for sounddesign in my archive. The audio went through two rounds of recording, trying different speeds and rhythms to find the right feel. English is not the first language of the lead actress, which made it an extra challenge — but she delivered it well in the end.
CREW
Bennet
(camera/directing/organisation)
Ram
(setrunner/locationscouting/lighting)
Kaltrina
(time management/consistency/setrunner)
Janne
(behind the scenes photography/help)
CAST
catawr
Neil
Angelito
RESULTS AND RESPONSE
The film was published on YouTube and Instagram on July 8th, 2026. Within 3 days it reached over 300 clicks on YouTube and 270 likes on Instagram — without any paid promotion. The response was positive and the topic seemed to resonate with people.
The project was supported by two Instagram collaborations — with Hochschule Anhalt and the lead actress catawr — which helped extend the reach of the film.
The film is now being considered for submission to short film festivals.
REFLECTION
This project taught me a lot — not just about filmmaking, but about working under real pressure with limited time and resources.
What worked well was the preparation. Having a detailed shot list, a clear schedule, and a defined visual concept made the shoot day manageable despite the tight timeline. The team was small but committed, and that made a big difference.
The B-roll situation was manageable but involved some risk. Certain shots had to be captured separately after the main shoot day. Looking back, the pre-production planning was solid as a framework, but there was still a lot of improvisation on set. More detailed scene planning could have reduced that.
AI tools were used exclusively in pre-production — for storyboarding and planning — which helped make the preparation phase more visual and structured.
With a few days of distance I can also hear that the audio mix could be stronger in places, and I notice that the cuts don't always land exactly on the beat. These are things I would focus on more carefully next time.
EARLIER EXERCISES
Before this project, two shorter exercises shaped the approach.
The first was a Day in a Life — a maximum one-minute film using POV shots following a single person from waking up to going to bed. It was a first experiment with observational camera work and rhythm in editing.
The second exercise explored how the same action filmed from two different perspectives can create completely opposite moods. That contrast between calm and tension, between distance and closeness, directly influenced how the final film was structured visually.
