Premise of the Film
Wyrm (2017) is a short film directed by Christopher Winterbauer. It is a dark comedy about a young boy who has two days to get his first kiss or he’ll be held back. The logline of this film would be, “Wyrm, a young boy, is given two days to get his first kiss, or he risks being forced to wear a monitoring collar through high school”. The theme of the film is transformation. Wyrm, the main character, must transition from adolescence to young adulthood. The genre is comedy. Specifically, Wyrm is a dark comedy. The tone of the film is both funny and playful. It gives the viewers a new perspective on a young person’s coming of age story.
Basic Dramatic Structure
The inciting incident in Wyrm takes place at the beginning of the film when Wyrm’s twin sister, who has just had her collar popped, tells him that she wants him to move out of their shared room. (In the film, a child’s collar pops off after a receiving their first kiss). She says, “I don’t want to be related to the only freak in the 9th grade who can’t get his collar popped”. This causes Wyrm to visit the child development specialist who tells him he is the last person in his grade to get his collar popped. He also tells him that he may be held back if he doesn’t get his first kiss in 2 days. This is a major plot point because he immediately attempts to find a girl to kiss. Next, he offers a girl money to kiss him, but she hangs up on him. He sees his sister’s friend, and likes her. He then attempts to kiss his friend, who punches him in the eye. The midpoint comes when he asks his sister for help, and she agrees because he says he’ll move out of their room if she does. The climax is when his sister invites her friend over to watch a movie. She leaves the room and her friend kisses Wrym. She pops his collar. The resolution comes when he turns in his collar and moves into his brother’s room. The denouement is when Wyrm explains how he got the name Wyrm. Although Wyrm finally gets his collar popped, in the end, he doesn’t know any more about sex than he did before. His life doesn’t drastically change.
Production Design. The production design of the film is very nostalgic. The costumes are clothing styles from the 1980’s. The characters wore a lot of sweaters with bright colors. The girls would wear their hair in a side ponytail, which was a very popular hairstyle in the 80’s. The style of Wyrm’s house was a ranch-style home, a popular home design from that era. The production designer had a difficult task of taking a house in a city, and making it look like it’s in a different time and place in history.
Cinematography. Wyrm incorporated many medium shots, close up shots, and inserts. In his book On Directing Film, David Mamet says, “If you are telling a story, moving from one image to another, the images have to be more and more ‘interesting’.” (Mamet, 1991, p. 62). This is true of the film Wyrm. Each image projected the film forward. Whenever a character would mention a significant item, we would see an insert of that item. The camera would also dolly in and dolly out on multiple occasions. For instance, there was a scene where Wyrm is in his room talking on the phone. The camera starts on his face, then the camera moves backward, and a wider view of his room is displayed. There are quite a few shots like this in the film.
Cinematography, Sound, and Editing. The short film Wyrm used a lot of natural and practical lighting, which is technique that will be used as I work on the short film project in FCP this month. Since the film we will work on is a zero-low resource film, we will use this technique as well. The producer of our film owns a lighting kit, so we will have additional lighting for our nighttime shoots. We will also incorporate close up shots and medium shots to express the character’s emotions in our film. Our film is very dramatic, so close up shots and medium shots will play a huge role in our film’s production. The short film Wyrm mainly used diegetic sounds (speaking roles), and nature sounds when the characters were interacting outside, which we will also do with the audio in our film. It will be a challenge for our film to capture nature sounds while filming because there will be a lot of background noises happening. However, we will add in nature sounds for the outdoor scenes during post production.
Conclusion. There are many jump cuts when it comes to the editing of the short film Wyrm. Many of the jump cuts happen at the beginning of the film when Wyrm is attempting to find someone to kiss. However, I noticed that the second half of the film uses more transitions once he has found someone to kiss him and he moves into his brother’s room. All in all, the film Wyrm was a truly enjoyable dark comedy that used various lighting techniques to portray the emotions of the characters. Although the short film Wyrm is a comedy, it incorporates a lot of elements we will use in our short film entitled, My Boy (2019).
References
Mamet, D. (1991). On Directing Film, 61-62. New York: Penguin Group.
Armani's Mastery Journal 