The other night I watched the 2020 Academy Award-winning short film, The Neighbor’s Window (Curry, 2019). The basic premise of the short is a mother who is growing bored with her monotonous life starts spying on her neighbor’s through their open window and gets more than a peek into their lives. The short’s main theme was other people’s lives seem more appealing until you look closer. The short is a drama, though from the first scene it could’ve almost been the start of a romantic comedy. After that, it gets much more emotional as the mother, Alli (Maria Dizzia), becomes obsessed with watching her neighbors through the window.
The Neighbor’s Window, like most films, follows the basic dramatic structure without much deviation or breaking of rules. The inciting incident is when Alli and her husband (Greg Keller) first see the neighbors having sex while they’re eating dinner and cannot stop staring at them. The first plot point is when Alli gets binoculars for her husband but then starts using them herself, the midpoint of the short is when Alli notices the neighbors sitting at their table, clearly after getting bad news. The second plot point is when Alli’s husband notices the neighbor is now bald and assume he shaved his head. This all leads to the climax where Alli sees the neighbor in a hospital bed in their apartment passed out as his wife climbs into the bed and lays with him. The film resolves with Alli going across the street after the sick husband passes away and his wife reveals to Alli that she and her husband watched and were envious of Alli and her family.
The production design was quite good as it perfectly conveyed the two apartments for what they were: a family’s lived-in home and a newlywed couple’s apartment turned in-home hospice. The costume design also helped show how tired Alli was with her routine as well as the state of the neighbor’s lives as they never have dialogue until Alli meets the wife at the end, so their emotional state is only seen how they look and their physical actions.
The cinematography was also interesting in that it was generally very well-lit in both apartments, but that lighting is accentuated in the voyeuristic scenes as they’re mostly at night so even when it is bright in the apartments, everything around the windows is darkness. The first and final shots are also similar in that they both have lit windows on the right side and the night sky on the left, but the final has more focus on who is seen in the window, giving the audience a voyeuristic look at them just like they had of the neighbors.
There isn’t much music in this short, but what is there is very somber to fit the emotional nature of the short. Most of the audio in this short is natural sounds and dialogue. The natural sounds help root what is happening in reality and give a sense of the familiar such as plates being set on the table or coffee being poured. Most of the dialogue isn’t needed but does show the state of mind of Alli and her husband as he quickly loses interest in the spying and she becomes infatuated with looking through the binoculars every time she’s near the window. The neighbor’s dialogue is needed, though, as it’s the best way to get the full meaning of the reveal.
The editing was not too interesting, but the editor did leave a lot of lengths in shots and there are few short takes used throughout. This allows the pacing to take its time and lets the full emotional weight sit with the viewer even when it cuts away, such as after Alli see the neighbor in the hospital bed for the first time as the impact is felt for so long that when Alli is pulled out of staring, the viewer is still thinking about it. It also helps that they cut nearly all sound out leaving the viewer thinking about how someone so full of life was quickly brought down by a fatal illness. It was noteworthy that an unknown amount of time passes throughout this short as at one point they say it was months since they first looked into the window, but there is little indication of time jumps after that.
What is useful to know for our no-budget short films is knowing how an Oscar-winning short is filmed almost entirely in two apartments and a short scene on a sidewalk. Similarly, our film will be able to be shot entirely in two areas of the backlot on campus. Limited locations clearly do not prohibit artistic expression and can actually be a boon for the creators as they’re forced to make it work with what they have. Also, while this short was simple, the production design was effective at making what is seen on screen look real and so it is very important that we are able to make what we shoot look like it is real despite filming on a backlot.
The challenge for our project, I realize, is making it look as real as this short looked. Although I’m not the production designer, as DP I can put the focus on what is real to mask what isn’t as, even in a five-minute short film, immersion is a crucial factor. To quote the movie Inception (Nolan, 2010), “Our dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake we realize things were strange.” My group, like all filmmakers, must endeavor to make our film look so real that the audience forgets they were even watching a movie until it is over.
References
Curry, M. (Director). (2019). The Neighbor’s Window [Short Film]. Marshall Curry Productions.
Nolan, C. (Director). (2010). Inception [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.
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