Before the Silence is a fiction short film that plunges into the waters of anxiety and depression from the perspective of a female sound technician who, in the cinema, gets to hear things that no one elsehears.

The Boom operator spends her days on the set listening to alien voices through her headphones. With her microphone on her back, she secretly gossips in conversations looking for something to grab her attention. However, her curiosity will collide with an unavoidable silence on the other side of a large door. The door presence will open a gap where voices will evoke images opening new doors. Thus, she will enter a nightmare world, pushing her to reconcile with her biggest fears: the hopelessness caused by anticipation of events that never occurred, and the vital anguish of knowing that everything comes to an ending. With an experimental treatment that oscillates between psychological drama and horror, the short film Before the Silence is Pablo Sanchez's debut film that enforces his first incursion into the world of fiction as a director and screenwriter.

Frame from Nimic (2019) Yorgos Lanthimos

THE CAST: THE BOOM OPERATOR AND THE ACTRESS

The Boom operator is played by Tania Santana (Hierro, ¡Garcia!), a quiet, self-contained and serious character. She listens to the inner side of others, as she has lost the ability to listen to herself. She is terribly alone. The events in Before the Silence cause her to give up her routine and awake her humanity. Knowing the inexorable ending of her own life and of every single thing she will ever want, makes her feel terrified. The character attends a reconciliation with the feeling of loss (and losing herself).

Her counterpart is the Actress, played by Helena Ezquerro (La reina del pueblo, Las chicas están bien), a vigorous girl wholeheartedly focused on her interpretation career. She acts as the voice of conscience, which both frightens and attracts the main character. The Actress’ journey generates a cryptic and mysterious universe, which will wrap us in a spiral of constant instability.

THE VISUAL STYLE AND THE SOUND ENVIRONMENT

The design of photography is directed to generate that the viewers -the camera view- identify themselves with the situation of the character at all times. The image is recreated in scenes of listening, as well as in shots that grant the character with context within spaces. The aesthetics are evolving while the locations keep transforming, becoming more organic as the footage moves forward. Greyish, greenish, muted tones prevail in enclosed spaces where sunlight cannot enter.

Frame from The Machinist (2004) Brad Anderson

The aim of the sound design within the short film is that the listenings performed by the boom operator through her sound recorder manage to draw a sound evolution in this deconstruction of the spaces. This sound treatment will start from a conventional speech, moving on to include sounds that sound out of frame: distortions, real-life noises, intrusive thoughts, generating a tangle of noises that play with silence.

Frame from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) David Fincher

Antes del silencio

Antes del silencio