Exclusive Interview with Carla Pereira | Selection Process

1 – “Selection Process” uses a rich artistic proposal to explore a realistic yet cliche situation. ¿How did you choose the situation at hand? ¿Was it based on any real life situations? ¿Did the original idea transform a lot during the process of making the film?

The script for the short is based on a comic that I drew for a friend’s fanzine, Peter Jojaio, a few years ago. The only premise of the fanzine was that mice should appear. The story itself never happened in real life, but the question about silent film actors is actually a real question that was asked to a friend of mine during a job interview.

2 -The story owns its simplicity and makes it work like a charm. ¿Was the cyclical subtlety always planned? ¿What was the effect you hoped to achieve with this narrative tool? ¿Do you think a more complex storyline would achieve that same effect? 

The idea was to generate cognitive dissonance in the viewer, for example by using very vivid and saturated colors and mixing them with ugly aesthetics and a strange and unpleasant environment. I especially like it when the viewer encounters two conflicting emotions and is forced to question or reformulate his beliefs.

In this short film there is only one shot and counter shot. As the cat grows more and more nervous, the camera gets closer and closer. On the other hand, the mice always stay at the same distance; far and safe. With that we wanted to reinforce the atmosphere of threat. In addition to that, for the mice shots, Juanfran Jacinto (workshop manager) devised and manufactured a room with forced perspective. This allowed us to show a room that seemed grotesquely elongated, therefore of course bigger and empty.

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