Research Short Film: Six Shooter (2004) - Martin McDonagh

Six Shooter is an Oscar award winning short film which includes the theme 'regret' as well as many other emotions. The film deals greatly with loss and how it feels to lose someone close to you.

As described by the director, the film is... "A black and bloody Irish comedy about a sad train journey where an older man, whose wife has died that morning, encounters a strange and possibly psychotic young oddball..."

The first scene adopts and heavily uses the colour blue through the first scene in the hospital. This immediately makes aware the sadness and 'blues' of a death in the family or of someone close to you. The audience understand's that the main character 'Donnelly' is suffering this pain from the death of his Wife. The same pain will be shown in our film through the main character's emotion, from the death of his brother. The colour correction in our short drama will be heavily influenced by the first scene in Six Shooter. The flashbacks and dream sequences will be noticeable due to the fact of slight colour changes, however, the whole film will have a sense of a slight blue tone. This will show the main character (Ryan's) sadness and grief from his younger brother's death. To determine to which extent we use colour correction and tinted lights to shoot each specific scene, I will discuss this issue with the cinematographer and post-production visual editor.

In the final scene Donnelly is at home, he's getting ready to kill himself. He looks in the gun: 2 bullets. Just when he is about to shoot himself, he hears scratching sounds from David, his wife's pet rabbit. He takes David in his lap, gently cradling and stroking it, telling the rabbit "I'll be following you shortly", before putting a bullet in the rabbit's head. Ready for his final act, Donnelly nonetheless fumbles with the gun, drops it, and accidentally discharges it of its last bullet. Stunned, Donnelly looks at the useless smoking six shooter, then at the bloody rabbit in his arms. He heaves heavy sighs, looks skyward and moans, "Oh Jesus! What a fuckin' day."

From this last scene the director uses foreshadowing to develop the narrative. E.g- Donnelly's dead wife's rabbit interrupts his suicide attempt and through coincidence makes him discharge both bullets so he cannot kill himself. Our film will use foreshadowing when the main character "Ryan" goes into his brother's bedroom for the first time after his brother's death. He will find object which will develop the narrative. The object will help Ryan to reconnect with his dead brother. The foreshadowing event we shall use will be his dead brother's scarf, laptop and a safe keeping box of his dead brother's private and important items.