Working on the production of the first scene here, utilising the painterly style I was experimenting with during the, yes, the experimental unit – I use a chiaroscuro artstyle as it is perfect for the creepy atmosphere I wish to produce.
I have decided to forgo the label on the VHS tape as it doesn’t work very well with the live paint brush filter I’m using within blender. Also, removing unnecessary text would better allow for the viewer’s attention to sit on the left side, where I want them to gravitate toward.
In my previs, I have specks of dust that float toward the left side, giving spatial importance to the right of the screen. However, this doesn’t work very well for this art style as it incorporates movement on a canvas where only the important features should be moving. I want the rest of the screen to be stationary in order to deepen the idea that every frame/ scene is an intricate painting.
Context & Aim
This entry documents my early production work on the opening scene of the film, created around five months ago. At this stage, I was developing the painterly visual language I had begun experimenting with during the Experimental Unit and testing how it could support the overall tone of this short film. My intention was to build a chiaroscuro-driven, canvas-like environment that established a quiet but unsettling atmosphere from the first frame.
Painterly Chiaroscuro as the Foundation of the Scene
From the start, I knew the painterly style would define the identity of this film. The chiaroscuro approach – heavy shadows contrasted with controlled highlights – was ideal for the eerie, intimate mood I wanted. The goal was for every frame to resemble a handcrafted painting; not just stylised, but something that feels static and composed even when the scene contains movement.
To support this, I continued refining the “Live Paint” brush filter inside Blender. This tool places expressive, directional brush strokes across surfaces, giving them a tactile, textured quality. Because of that texture, I had to carefully choose what elements belonged in the scene and which would disrupt the effect.
Removing the VHS Label to Preserve Visual Focus
Originally, the VHS tape in the scene included a printed label. During testing, I found that the brush-stroke filtering did not interact with this label in a convincing way. It broke the illusion of a painted surface and distracted from the chiaroscuro lighting.
Removing the label improved the composition in two ways:
- It preserved the painterly consistency of the frame.
- It allowed the viewer’s attention to gravitate naturally toward the left side of the shot, where I wanted their eye to settle.
This was a small decision, but it demonstrated an early pattern in my workflow—removing digital clutter so that painterly elements could dominate.
Reconsidering Dust Particles From the Previs
In my original previs (created months earlier), I had small specks of dust floating toward the left of the frame. The intention was to subtly guide spatial focus and create an atmospheric sense of depth.
However, once I committed to the painterly style, these floating particles worked against the aesthetic. Because the film treats each frame as if it were an intricate hand-painted composition, unnecessary movement weakens the illusion. Only elements with narrative significance should animate; the rest of the frame should feel still, as though painted on canvas.
I removed the dust movement because it contributed nothing thematically and distracted from the painterly quality. Keeping the environment largely static reinforces the idea that the world is being revealed through brush strokes rather than rendered digitally.
The Early Box-Interior Perspective
This first scene was originally conceptualised as a shot from inside a box, looking outward toward a television. At the time, I had not planned to display anything on the TV itself. It functioned purely as an atmospheric introduction—an unusual camera position meant to generate intrigue around the title of the film displayed on a cassette tape.
While minimal, the interior-of-a-box framing helped establish:
- the confined, voyeuristic feeling I wanted
- early themes of obscured perspective
- a physical limitation on what the viewer can see
This idea eventually evolved. As the project matured, I realised that I wanted each scene to carry not only tonal significance but also narrative importance. The empty TV screen lacked meaning beyond mood. Later, I introduced the idea of a cartoon playing on the TV, which allowed the scene to interact with the story more directly instead of functioning purely as a stylistic opener.
Research Points for This Blog Entry (Painterly Opening Scene)
Chiaroscuro as psychological atmosphere
I leaned into chiaroscuro because historically it has always been tied to emotional intensity and moral ambiguity. Painters like Caravaggio used deep shadow not just for dramatic contrast but to isolate the viewer’s attention and create a narrative spotlight inside the frame. That’s exactly what I’m doing here: using darkness as a framing device rather than an absence of detail. Research into chiaroscuro in cinema shows that horror relies heavily on “selective illumination” to guide emotional focus, and this helped justify my decision to keep most of the frame still and heavily shadowed.
Painterly texturing and the illusion of handcrafted frames
The Live Paint brush filter I use in Blender connects to digital painting research suggesting that directional brush strokes trigger the viewer’s memory of physical media. People subconsciously associate brush direction with artist intention. Because of that, any foreign element in the frame that doesn’t match the stroke pattern disrupts the illusion. Removing the VHS label wasn’t just aesthetic preference. It aligns with the principle that stylised worlds require internal consistency so the viewer doesn’t fall out of the painted illusion.
Composition by subtraction
Part of building this painterly world involved learning what to remove. In art history, minimalist painters and chiaroscuro practitioners both emphasise the idea that subtraction sharpens meaning. The VHS label broke the unity of the brush strokes. Removing it follows the same logic that painters use when they strip away visual noise so that negative space and controlled highlights can do more work.
Movement hierarchy in painterly animation
I researched the idea of “movement hierarchy” in stylised animation – how motion should only happen where it matters. Studio Ghibli’s background philosophy is a good example. Their backgrounds remain still unless a story-relevant element needs to move. This supports emotional clarity. My floating dust specks, while atmospheric in the previs, immediately broke the illusion of a still canvas because they made the background feel alive in the wrong way. Once the painterly style became central, it became clear that every nonessential motion weakened the frame.
Dust and atmosphere in low-movement cinematic frames
Cinematographers often use particles in the air to guide attention, but only when depth and realism are the goals. In painterly cinema, floating particles create visual dissonance. Research on digital matte painting shows that static texture is more believable than volumetric dust when replicating painted surfaces. Removing the dust returned the scene to a believable “static artwork” state.
Voxeristic framing and boxed-in perspective
The early idea of shooting from inside a box echoes established research on “constrained perspective”. Films like Se7en and The Ring use restricted sightlines to make the viewer feel like an intruder or witness. A boxed-in camera creates intimacy and claustrophobia at the same time. That’s exactly what I wanted in the earliest version of this scene – a sense of peeking into something private.
Object-driven opening sequences
My initial plan of framing the title through a VHS tape connects to a long tradition of using objects as narrative entry points. Studies on “object framing” in film note that physical artefacts can anchor an audience emotionally before characters even appear. I was essentially applying that idea – letting the VHS tape act as the film’s first piece of worldbuilding. Even though I later changed the TV content, the choice to start with an object remained rooted in this same logic.
Television as a thematic device
Later on I decided to actually show something on the TV because research into screens-as-presence in horror is incredibly relevant. Screens often function as both portals and witnesses. By placing something on the TV instead of leaving it blank, I shifted the scene from atmospheric to narrative. It’s a direct extension of my research into televisions not as props but as entities within the film’s world.
Painterly stillness as temporal suspension
One of the main reasons I committed to minimal movement is tied to the concept of “temporal suspension” in painting. Paintings freeze a moment permanently, and when animation imitates that stillness, it creates a feeling that time is holding its breath. That became an important design choice for the opening scene. The viewer should feel as though the world is frozen except for the elements that actually matter – the small pulses of life that break the stillness.
Atmosphere-first openings in horror structure
Many horror films open with scenes that create mood before revealing story. Research on horror pacing identifies “establishing dread” as a crucial function of opening shots. My painterly, still, chiaroscuro introduction follows that structure. The lack of overt narrative in the earliest version of the scene wasn’t a flaw – it was part of a genre tradition where atmosphere precedes explanation.