Logline: This piece follows a man named Jake who seeks to blackmail this famously anonymous individual with revealing documents that could expose his true identity. However, as the story progresses Jake realises that his dreams to easily become rich don’t go his way, not even with his colleague Bryce.

From the examples displayed and the exercises we shot in class, we looked at the diverse ways that the characters were portrayed through coverage and decoupage onscreen. But in this piece, I wanted to experiment with the different ways in which a character was concealed, whilst being present within the storyline. One of the examples that inspired the piece was Keyser Soze from the famous film The Usual Suspects (1995), where this mysterious entity was portrayed through backlighting to form silhouettes, extreme close-ups of his hand and dialogue to acknowledge his existence without having to show the audience. In this piece, I wanted to conceal the character who is known only as ANONYMOUS by utilising shadows, glaring sunlight, extreme closeups, shallow depth of field and a vast variety of Over-the-Shoulder shots, creating ambiguity and mystery within this 2-minute storyline.

During principal photography, I was unable to get the depth of field shallow enough due to the constraining setting situated at a public bench, which prohibited large focal distances that normally allow shallow depth of field. The sound also posed an issue because numerous factors like buskers, trains, and crowds limited the possibility of capturing clean dialogue audible enough for viewers.

But even with all the on-set constraints, this piece portrays the theme of concealment through its unconventional coverage, relevant mise-en-scene and chronological decoupage.