Digger's Story
(Short-short film)
How can anyone tell a story in less than a minute film with nothing but a camera or cell phone video?
Here's Danny Sillada’s own take using the video of his my Nikon camera that saves every 45 seconds. The setting was on the street a la "Nollywood" style, or hit-and-run filmmaking, and the diggers (unlikely casts) were not aware that he was shooting them. The take was only 40 seconds and by the time the diggers were conscious of Sillada’s presence, the shooting was already over.
Editing was more challenging than the hit-and-run shooting. Sillada had to create a narrative that would magnify the ordinary story of a digger, considering the brevity or the limitation of the footage. And the only way to do it was to use poetry as an auxiliary device in creating an imagery that would enhance the visual presentation. He coined this type of shor short film as "docu-poem," using poetry and video footages of people in action, things, or places to create a "visual dialogue" within a time-constraint narrative.
In "Digger's Story," he was able to achieve the dark humor that he wanted to portray using both the actual footage of the diggers and a five-line poem.
Digger's Story is a satire and a bleak metaphor about human life: how we struggle to live day-by-day by digging our own lives and others' based on what we do for a living. In this ephemeral world, we are like diggers, digging a hole in our life, a hole that will eventually lead to our final resting place.”
Here's Danny Sillada’s own take using the video of his my Nikon camera that saves every 45 seconds. The setting was on the street a la "Nollywood" style, or hit-and-run filmmaking, and the diggers (unlikely casts) were not aware that he was shooting them. The take was only 40 seconds and by the time the diggers were conscious of Sillada’s presence, the shooting was already over.
Editing was more challenging than the hit-and-run shooting. Sillada had to create a narrative that would magnify the ordinary story of a digger, considering the brevity or the limitation of the footage. And the only way to do it was to use poetry as an auxiliary device in creating an imagery that would enhance the visual presentation. He coined this type of shor short film as "docu-poem," using poetry and video footages of people in action, things, or places to create a "visual dialogue" within a time-constraint narrative.
In "Digger's Story," he was able to achieve the dark humor that he wanted to portray using both the actual footage of the diggers and a five-line poem.
Digger's Story is a satire and a bleak metaphor about human life: how we struggle to live day-by-day by digging our own lives and others' based on what we do for a living. In this ephemeral world, we are like diggers, digging a hole in our life, a hole that will eventually lead to our final resting place.”