This previs marked a noticeable shift in how I wanted the film to feel. The camera in this version sits very close behind the man’s head, which created a more intimate atmosphere. I wanted the viewer to feel a sense of kinship with him at this stage, before any preconceptions form. When you see the back of someone’s head in a dim room, it feels like you are sharing the space with them. There is something private about sitting alone in the dark watching television, and I wanted the viewer to experience that same compromised, vulnerable position.
This was also the point where I started to realise how important the environment was going to be. It was no longer just a background. It was a living part of the story, and because of that, I moved to a wider 16 by 9 frame. A narrower aspect ratio would have forced the audience to rely too heavily on character expressions, but I wanted the environment to carry meaning and subtle manipulation. The characters in this film are small pieces in a world that has a presence of its own.
In this previs, you can see more focus placed on what sits around the man. A lamp on the left, a painting on the right, and the room framing him in a quiet but meaningful way. I placed the couch arm in the foreground to give the viewer a bit of emotional distance. It creates a soft barrier that makes the audience feel safer, even though the unease is already forming. This is still the beginning, after all. I wanted to lull them into a sense of comfort before things take a turn.
The second shot returns to the scratching gesture but with more detail. This was where I began experimenting with religious imagery. I added what looked like a halo of spilled beer above a face in the background. The intention was never to be literal. It was about tapping into shapes and symbols that people already understand without thinking. Religious symbols tend to sit in the back of the mind, and using them subtly helps the audience form interpretations based on their own knowledge.
This previs was also where I first experimented with foreground, mid ground, and background separation. Breaking up the space this way made the environment feel more layered and helped me control where the viewer places their attention. It also contributed to the sense of observing something from a slight remove.
Later in this previs, I used a visual glitch that ripples through the shot. This was an early idea for showing the antagonist’s influence over the room. Curtains moved, frames shook, and objects responded to an unseen force. I abandoned this direction once the painterly style became central, but it was useful for figuring out how the supernatural presence might interact with the world.
There is a moment where the man stands up, and his head aligns with two horns on the wall behind him. It is not something the character intends, but the composition forms a strong image. It lets the audience draw conclusions about him even before anything is revealed about his personality. This was one of my first attempts at letting the environment shape how the viewer reads a character.
The belt scene also evolved here. I added a spill of alcohol splitting down the middle, which echoed the idea of a parted sea. It was bold, maybe too bold, which is why I moved away from it. The snakeskin belt contributed to a quiet religious theme I was experimenting with. Snakeskin naturally carries associations with temptation and moral decline, and pairing it with the derelict environment helped build the father’s character without relying on dialogue or direct explanation.
Another moment that came from this previs was the father picking up a photo of the mother and knocking over the family photo next to it. It revealed his emotional priorities in a clear and visual way. These kinds of choices became important building blocks for the final film.
Toward the end of this previs, there is a simple shot of the girl hiding in the closet. She is only a silhouette here, but the intention was always to turn this into a tense back and forth between her and the demon moving past the door. Even in this rough version, the idea was clear.
This previs did not use the painterly style yet, but it shaped most of the symbolic and emotional ideas that later became central to the film. It taught me what needed to stay, what needed to change, and what the environment should say about the characters long before I painted anything.
Research Points
1. Proximity, intimacy and point-of-view
When I started playing with the close over-the-shoulder framing in this previs, I noticed how much it aligned with theories around “subjective camera” in horror. Scholars often bring up how proximity to the back of a character’s head collapses the distance between viewer and subject, placing the audience in a vulnerable observational role. Films like The Shining use this kind of trailing shot to form a quiet emotional connection before anything overtly frightening happens. This helped me justify why the closeness in my previs felt right for the early, intimate tone of the story.
2. Environmental storytelling as character exposition
In this previs I realised the environment wasn’t just a backdrop. It echoes what Henry Jenkins calls “narrative architecture” – the idea that spaces themselves can communicate backstory and psychology. The couch arm blocking part of the frame, the dim lamp, the painting on the right – these are quiet signals that tell the viewer how the room feels before the character even moves. This informed how I later built the entire house around emotional cues rather than realism.
3. Aspect ratio and emotional hierarchy
Switching to a 16:9 frame connected strongly to discussions in film studies about how horizontal compositions create room for environmental meaning. A tighter aspect ratio forces facial reading, but a wider frame lets the world speak. Horror films that emphasise space – like Hereditary – use this same logic to make the environment feel overpowering. This research supported my decision to treat the world as an active presence rather than simply a location.
4. Symbolic shapes and subconscious religious cues
The subtle halo created by a beer spill in the previs links to theories on “implicit iconography.” Religious shapes are powerful because they sit in cultural memory, even when used abstractly. Horror often plays with these half-formed symbols to trigger subconscious interpretation. Reading about this helped me understand why the hand-drawn halo felt impactful even before the story had been refined.
5. Layered depth: foreground, midground, background
My use of foreground–midground–background separation connects to classical compositional theory. Renaissance and Baroque painters used layered staging to control how the eye travels across an image, and cinematographers continue to rely on this same spatial hierarchy. Breaking the space into three planes let me guide attention without excessive movement, which later became essential once I committed to static “painted” shots.
6. Early glitch experimentation and mediated horror
The moment where the glitch ripples across the shot ties directly to research on analogue horror – especially how screens act as thresholds. Studies of Ringu and similar works emphasise the “haunted medium” trope, where the supernatural manipulates the signal rather than appearing physically. That idea shaped this stage of the project, even though I later abandoned glitch for paint.
7. Accidental symbolism and environmental framing
When the father stands up and the horns line up with his head, it reminded me of mise-en-scène analysis – specifically how directors often use environmental alignment to load a character with unspoken meaning. German Expressionist cinema does this constantly, letting shapes in the environment twist the viewer’s interpretation of a character. Realising this gave me confidence to lean harder into spatial symbolism later in production.
8. Snakeskin belt and religious connotations
The snakeskin belt resonated with what I was reading about symbolic props. Snakes have long-standing associations with temptation and downfall – from biblical imagery to modern cinema. The belt becomes more than an object; it becomes a moral signifier embedded into the mise-en-scène. Research into symbolic prop placement reinforced how small items can contribute to character psychology without any dialogue.
9. Photographs as emotional anchors
The moment when the father picks up one photo and knocks over another directly parallels how films use photographs to expose inner conflict. Scholars often call photographs “frozen memory objects,” and their placement or disruption reveals where a character’s emotional gravity lies. This helped me refine how I later use photographs in the shrine room as narrative anchors.
10. Silhouettes, concealment and liminal fear
The girl hiding in the closet began as a silhouette, which ties into research on liminal framing. Silhouettes sit between visibility and invisibility, which taps into primal fear – you see enough to understand what you’re looking at, but not enough to feel safe. Reading about chiaroscuro and negative-space horror helped me understand why this moment felt strong even in previs.