Behind the Lens

4.27A Motel-Room Meltdown: Shooting the Dollar Baby Paranoid

Paranoid is an eight-minute excursion into the mind of a paranoid-schizophrenic woman on the verge of a total breakdown. The short film was adapted from Stephen King’s 100-line poem “Paranoid: A Chant,” which appears in Skeleton Crew, a collection of his short stories.

I served as both director and cinematographer on the film, and my primary goal was to create a visceral visual experience that would plunge the viewer into the chaotic and disturbed first-person voice of King’s poem. Paranoid was primarily photographed in the span of a single day.

One of my first choices was to shoot in the 2.39:1 widescreen format. Because this project was always intended to have a digital finish, and ...