31.12.23

Characters: Paper, Screen, Us

FIRST: Paper falls awkwardly from top of staircase into underlying white void. Camera moves backwards, revealing white screen and we are circling back to the starting position of us standing on the lowest step of the staircase.

SECOND ITERATION: Starts and looks the same, only the camera’s movements are less shaky and the lighter stays on longer. It seems that there has been some growing kind of familiarity that allows for things to go smoother in general.

THIRD ITERATION: Paper gets notice of this too. It’s descent is now even slower, it stops overall for a couple of moments, frozen in one position, shivering, nonetheless open for us to get acquainted. After a while, screen is revealed again and we circle back once more (there’s not much change in this open space, as it is less personal and more objective, and serves more like an anchor to the rest of the narrative, a reset of some sorts - as opposed to the stairwell: representing the house of something you lost e.g.)

FOURTH ITERATION: This one starts from a different perspective: that of Paper. This means that we can see a human presence, instead of just hearing it, feeling it or being it.

      To see from the perspective of a falling object, and all its predictable twists and turns (after three iterations): we see a human being standing on the cusp of a staircase that’s hanging over a white void connected to a room we never enter. There is sound coming from that room, suggesting human presence there, too.

(Is the person on the stairwell hiding from someone, something?

      Is the person in the room hiding from someone, something?)

      The person is holding a lighter that’s intermittently being lit, illuminating the space for brief moments, exposing us: the falling object. Although it’s a point light, it’s beam is aimed at us, and it is therefore too dark to make sense of the appearance of the person. We fall into the white and are completely immersed in it. At the last moment we see a head popping over the edge of the staircase before the end credits come in, and a title that reveals almost nothing.