The Missing Man
A 14-second black-and-white film-noir short in three shots: an envelope slides under a detective's door, and the photograph inside shows his own face.
A woman slides an envelope under a detective's door and walks away. Inside is a photograph, and the face in it is his. The Wavemaker agent made it from a short brief: three shots in hard black-and-white light with rain on the window, three lines of hard-boiled narration in a designed voice, and a quiet jazz bed.
To make your own, describe the character, the room and the beats, and give the lines. Here the agent made reference pictures of the detective and the empty office before any shot. For the twist it made the final close-up first and turned that same still into the aged print, so the face in the photo and the face in the last shot are one picture. It then animated each shot, placed the narration line by line over rain and jazz, and reviewed the finished file. The download holds the finished film.
How this example was made
- Made reference pictures first The detective from three sides and the empty office from both directions.
- Built the twist from one picture The last shot's still was made first, then cropped and aged into the photograph he finds.
- Animated three shots The envelope slides under the door, he draws the print from it, and he looks up into the passing headlights.
- Voice, rain and jazz Three narrated lines in a designed low, gravelly voice, over rain and a quiet smoky jazz bed.
- Reviewed and revised Given a full review of picture, sound and the brief, then revised on the owner's note so the envelope is larger than the print it holds.
Real and generated. Generated: the detective, the woman, the office, the motion, the voice, the rain and the music.
Known limit. He holds the print with a light pinch on its edge at about 7 s, and the woman's legs and skirt soften as she walks off behind the glass.