Original subtitles

I had complete freedom.

My suggestion for how to make this film

was really an attempt to get out of it.

I didn't want to make it, for various reasons.

To get out of it elegantly,

I suggested a very revolutionary approach

to making the film

that I wasn't even sure about.

It involved making heavy use of filters

and a very dominant green hue.

The general idea was to make the film very schematically...

emphasizing what I called back then "the poetics of dirt"...

to stress...

the unclean reality around us.

I went quite far in that direction,

and honestly, after seeing the first rushes,

we weren't sure it worked at all or made any sense.

But after the first two scenes were edited,

I realized...

that when it was edited together...

it didn't repel the viewer

the way the first rushes did,

and so we went on.

In that sense I had complete freedom,

and the idea I proposed was accepted.

Then there was no turning back,

because it was so dramatically stylized in a specific direction

that any attempt to find a way out was hopeless,

and we just had to do it.

But as I said,

the first edited scenes showed it was working.

Our tools are very simple:

camera movements,

intensity of light on the screen,

light, shadow, contrast, and color.

Of course, you can say that contrast...

is related to lighting

and space and mise-en-scene.

You can come up with a longer list.

Some are harder to talk about than others.

Of course, with words it's very easy to say...

"You used similar tools as in the other film..."

to suggest a similarity.

But I actually think there's a gulf between the two films.

In A Short Film About Killing,

the dramatized nature of the image is very evident

from start to finish.

It handles the reality

in front of the camera quite brutally.

The filters and colors are glaringly evident from the start.

It's a reality entirely constructed through the filmic image.