Shannon Meilak Vide Galley

Triumph

Triumph
(short film)

This is a short experimental film, made in the Italian neo-realist style, that I made during my 2 weeks in Italy mid-2016.

‘Triumph’ is a story that demonstrates how an everyday task, such as walking stairs and hills, can be incredibly grueling to a person with mobility issues. I wanted to make this film, as this is an issue I personally face, particularly when I travel. Often people who accompany me in my travels, easily explore exciting places, often not realizing how much of a challenge the same journey is to me. I wanted to communicate to an audience that although slow, mobility impaired people are not incapable and with patience and support, can enjoy the same things in life as a fit able-bodied person can.
In making ‘Triumph’, my intention was to create a film inspired by Italian neorealist conventions. Being a film made in the 21st century, the film is somwhat experimental, introducing modern storytelling techniques and intertwining them with the classical, technical aspects of neorealism. The entire film was shot handheld on a DSLR, on location in Italy, to replicate the practice of using landscape in Italian neorealist films to define the story.
The film uses a 3-act structure, the 1st act depicting the everyday; a pivotal convention of neorealism. It includes all of the amateur like qualities of a neorealist film including occasional soft focus, over and under exposure, non-actors as key performers, the occasional glance of a performer into the lens of the camera and unsteady camera movements. This act introduces the audience to the main character’s perspective of able-bodied persons and their ability to climb stairs and hills with ease.
The 2nd act depicts the personal struggle of a mobility-impaired character and is presented in an experimental fashion. The opening shot of this act is held for an uncomfortable amount of time to induce a feeling of unease in the audience. Although long shots are an often-used technique of the neorealist movement, I have accentuated the dramatic journey ahead by including a slow change in aspect ratio. This shot then leads to a split screen that remains for the duration of the 2nd act.
The idea behind the split screen was to link the opening shot of the main character with the point of view (POV) shots. This link was established to guide the audience to an understanding that the POV is the real time journey of the character seen in the opening subjective shot. This subjective shot moves to the right of the screen which informs the audience that the subsequent shots of this side, depicts challenges the character has personally faced. As this sequence progresses, the shots become softer, a metaphor for the so-called light at the end of the tunnel.
The POV shot includes several jump cuts. The reason for the jump cuts in the POV is not to shorten the length of the scene or to mask any errors in cinematography, but rather to enforce the idea that when one undergoes a physical challenge, there are moments in which the participant loses sense of place. Often when undergoing a long, difficult walk, the journeyer will have lapses in memory, thinking only of arrival to the destination, they at times find themselves wondering how they moved from one point of the journey to the next, not remembering the exact steps they took to get there or the buildings or people they may have passed along the way.
The left hand POV shot is but one chapter in this characters story. By having both scenes play simultaneously, the audience can identify this and accept that the images on the right provide glimpses of the full journey and its challenges. This long, enduring act was created in an effort to demonstrate just how challenging a day in the life of a mobility-impaired character is. This is a direct juxtaposition of the 1st act that shows many different people climbing stairs and hills easily; a mundane method of movement between one point and the next.
The 3rd and final act is the so-called pay off. Although not a traditional form of neorealist story telling, I felt it necessary for there to be a reward for a mobility-impaired character, to undertake such a personal challenge. The vistas and beauty that are to be discovered at the other end of such an arduous journey, provides the motivation for the challenge to be undertaken. Again, a change in aspect ratio is used at the beginning of this sequence to create a level of drama in the grand reveal of beauty. These shots gradually become more inspiring and in an effort to tie the final act to the 1st, move from interior beauty to vast open vistas. The final shot of the film is that of a mountaintop, which not only provides the scene with an ending of awe inspiring natural beauty, but literally demonstrates the metaphoric mountain we must climb in any challenge.

Shannon Meilak

Director // Production Designer