Silent Film - 1 min
Role
Tools
Editor | Videographer
Premiere Pro | CanonR7
Feb 2026
Date
Overview
This is a 1 minute silent film that is built on the theme of: a day in the life of a pool bar. This project honed in on the skills of visual storytelling under the tight constraint of only 1 minute and forced my design skills and process to adapt to the restriction of only relying on sight.
Link: YouTube
Context & Problem
Enhanced Awareness
This project was particularly difficult as I had to adapt to many new unfamiliar processes. The theme of the video is to highlight the ever-changing moods that come about of the pool bar "Golden Break" throughout the day. Capturing the little missed details of the environment, the changing atmosphere, and the different emotions of the bar were all things I envisioned to capture to tell Golden Break's life story.
I made this project to enhance my awareness of my surrounding environments. Being able to take a subject, and understand and express all of its unique and subtle features is a skill any design artist should understand.
Obstacles & Insight
Strip to its Essance
The hardest process of the piece was after filming, where I needed to compress 1.5 hours worth of footage to only a minute. This was very difficult as I had to make decisions on cutting scenes that I wouldn't have cut otherwise. This trained my intuition of taking the footage, and stripping it to its most visually appealing and story driven moments.
Ideation & Execution
Morning & Night
To express the different moods in a static building, I chose two distinct timeframes of the poolbar, morning and night, as the people who attend during those times are contrastingly different. The silence of the morning, conveyed through stills and empty tables, compared to the night, filled with vibrancy and movement. The games shown during these times were also purposeful. The morning was serious snooker, played by old-time club professionals, while the night expressed social pool, played with friends and drinks.
Results & Reflection
Timing of Seconds
Through the tight constraints of the project, a great skill I developed was the technique of the timing of shots. I learnt to browse through scenes, picking out the best ones, and cutting them to the essence of the shot. Finding the points of interest, and effectively trimming them helped me learn the effectiveness of storytelling simply through the timing of clips.