Playback

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.