The Pavement is a short film noir produced by director Taylor Engel for the Spoiled Short Film Festival.

It is only 3 minutes long, but it manages to tell a story with a lot of depth by not recounting what actually happened, but by letting us know what happened as the events emerge in the mind of the protagonist. It is haunting.

I think short films are among the hardest forms of storytelling out there, but it works wonderfully when you master the art. Director Engel, who has long worked in trailers – and it shows – merges narration, perspective and images masterfully, creating a noir film that is almost a deconstruction of the genre. By using the tropes of film noir – black and white, crime, betrayal, the famme fatal, the damaged hero – but putting them in one by one at strange intervals, in a circling narration, he creates something that may work only in this format.

I’ve watched a lot of short films noir, but let me tell you this is by far my favourite.

Shot in just ten hours, this short ended up in the final top 10 of the Project Greenlight, the HBO show supervised by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck aimed to produce a feature film  for a first time director.

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RESOURCES

Good Short Film – The Pavement
Facebook – The Pavement Short Film
Film Shortage – The Pavementfstoppers – ‘The Pavement’ An Interview with Director Tayler Engel

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