Short Film Review of Gumshoe

Finery a short film one step in front of the rest

[dropcap size=big]T[/dropcap]his Short Film Thriller is a hard-boiled tale following Gumshoe, a private eye hot on the trail of his missing partner. In this world of femme fatales and hired goons, the truth lies beneath.

This is a nicely told Short Film and while the story is extremely basic: a man wakes up and is being chases through a spooky house, the director takes us on an amazing journey because like any story it all comes down to how you tell it.

Matt Steinauer the Director of “Gumshoe” decided to shoot this short film with a limited point of view and all in one shot (very ambitious). So did he pull it off? Well I was impressed to say the least! This short grabbed my attention from the outset and held it for the next 5 minutes.

The strongest and definitely the contributing factor to it’s successes is the POV concept. Yes the (Point Of View) forces us, the audience to use our imagination, to fill in the blanks of what is going on in the scene, a creative way to engage the audience.

Interview with Matt Steinauer

[dropcap size=big]W[/dropcap]e wanted to know more about this clever short film and unique piece of film making, so we got in touch with Ming Lai the producer of Gumshoe and he was kind enough to put us in contact with Matt Steinauer the director to answer some questions for us:

So Matt tell us a little bit about yourself how you got into film making?

I went to UCSD for filmmaking and developed an interest in film noir, comedy and action. Early influences were the stylized comedies by the Coen Brothers, Sam Raimi and Miyazaki.

How did you come up with the idea for this short film?

The germ of the idea came from watching ‘I Am Cuba’ and the elaborate camera choreography they staged in Castro’s Cuba in 1964. Particularly, a shot that after a long sequence ends up submerging in a pool and continuing. Later homaged in ‘Boogie Nights’.

I planned at first to do a still photo series that would end with a body at the bottom of a pool. The viewer would be able through visual clues to piece together the mystery. Finally, I figured out a way to shoot it live action. A future episode will have an underwater sequence.

What challenges did you face when it came to shooting this short film?

The main thing was the self-imposed limitations I had for it. It would be black-and-white, shot in one take and use a limited POV. Also, I wanted the story to move quickly and by using mostly off-screen sound the goal was to engage the viewer’s imagination to fill in the visual blanks.

During production the choreography was challenging and I kept stepping into the chocolate syrup “blood” a bit too much making me nearly slip and fall every time i squared off against the big guy in the hallway. The location still had wiring from the ‘20s so we popped a lot of circuits but still ended up shooting it in about eight hours.

What are your plans moving forward?

This is part one of a ten part series. Look for ‘Stiletto’ next that we’re shooting next month. I’m also developing a couple feature scripts at the moment.

So in conclusion this is a fun short film and hatrick award winning short film as it picks up three of our awards:  Nicely Told, Most Engaging and Most Original Short Film. We look foreword to see what this duo have up there sleeves for the next audition.

This short was filmed in Los Angeles on a Red Epic on a small budget and took 8 hrs to film.

Thanks for reading our review of the short film Gumshoe why not submit your short film