“At Least not today” is a horror short film dedicated to everyone who has feared for marriage and childbirth. In the interweaving dimensions within reality and illusion reflected by the photos, I project my own views on family life, marriage, pregnancy and childbirth. The story is about Wong Lam, pregnant with her first child, and her stubborn husband Cheung Keung, owner of a photo printing shop. A day before giving birth, they received a batch of negative films from a policewoman Leung Shuk Fen. Soon after the negatives were developed, Wong Lam found that her husband was graduately obsessed with the murder hidden in the photos, while their lives was connected with the world in the photos. Wong Lam kept wandering between reality and imagination. Finally, she gave birth to a distorted infant... This short film stems from my own personal experience. I was wandering, switching my identity as a mother and a director, facing the stress and anxiety of marriage, childbirth and work. The film is based on the fear of becoming a mother. The aim of this thesis is to document the complete process of the creation and production of “At Least not today”. I try to put forward the ideas of my work through sorting out the background and process of creation, literature review and discussion, analysis of production, and discussion after screening.
This thesis is divided into five chapters:
Chapter 1 – Introduction: an explanation of the background of the short film, its origin and screening plan.
Chapter 2 – Explanation of Theme and Literature Review: explain the main theme of the short film. Different research materials is reviewed and discussed, and relevant film works are referenced by this film.
Chapter 3 - Description of creation process: describes the film's creative concept and style in terms of script, character design and performance techniques.
Chapter 4 – Production: the production process of the film, including the main crew and pre-shooting planning, production details of each team, post-editing and post-production.
Chapter 5 - Screening and Conclusion: explains the situation of the public screening, records the responses and questions of the audience in the post-screening discussion, and reflects and summarizes the creation of the whole film.