An ordinary man, on his way to work, sees a poster on the wall with his photo on
it.
Director Statement
I can define the film "Playback" as a reflection of the emotional state of my
inner world at a time when I was questioning life when I was in my forties. The
subject that I thought I discovered internally at that time was the realisation
that when a person becomes an adult, he realises that he is actually an ordinary
person. I wanted to create a story and a character that symbolises the
controlling approach of the system in which this ordinary person lives and the
cyclical change of power.
We chose a street in Bayraklı, which evokes a dystopian industrial zone in Izmir,
as the location for the exterior shooting of the film, which will have a
dystopian atmosphere in general. The visual aesthetic we preferred was an
aesthetic reminiscent of old silent films that we thought would serve this
structure. We planned to shoot in black and white, at eye level, with a still
camera, in distant medium shots. We thought to change the emotional state of the
character by expanding the frame ratio in happy moments and colouring the scene.
We increased the frame ratio, which is generally used as 3:2, to 16:9 only
during the aria singing in the scene where the character is happy, and tried to
create a contrast with the general atmosphere.
Salih Usta, our leading actor, being a professional theatre and film actor as
well as being interested in physical theatre; we predicted that he would be
effective in facilitating the work of me and the whole team by showing high
performance in some difficult scenes of the film. In addition, since he is able
to perform comedy and drama at the same time, he is a very good actor.
I wanted the music of the film to be original and chamber music style, including
aria. At the end, I preferred to use a punk interpretation of Bach. The films I
was inspired by as cinematographic sources of visual inspiration were all the
films of Charlie Chaplin, David Lynch's Eraserhead and Mullholand Drive.
Although we received a small production support award from the 2nd Izmir Film
and Music Festival for the "Playback" short film project, we still had to
realise our project with a very limited budget. In order to use our existing
financial and human resources properly and economically, we agreed with Diler
Ercan, a professional independent producer. I think that the fact that Diler is
mostly engaged in short film production in Izmir will give us an advantage in
financial management, coordination and administrative issues, and therefore will
give me the opportunity to work comfortably in the creative field.
I would like the film to have a story that has the potential of multiple
meanings for the audience and I would like the thoughts that the story will
create to occupy the minds after the film.
