Our Best Short Film winner will receive our custom Global Shorts statuette which we ship anywhere in the world, free of charge. The award is manufactured by Society Awards, the same awards company that manufactures the Golden Globe and the Emmy. All winners will receive our Global Shorts Winner laurels in black, white, and gold.
Title: The Paper Plane Man
Runtime: 13 min
Country: Philippines
Director: Gabriel Foulc
Placement: Honorable Mention
Competition: September 30, 2016
Synopsis: Diane, an up and coming introvert novelist and Thomas an adventurous photographer lay in the bed of his bedroom. Sensing that they are developing a deep connection, Diane reminds Thomas her engagement with Jack, a very impatient, controlling, rude man.
Her love life, however, is not as positive or fulfilling. Her fiancé, Jack does not evoke the same feelings in her as Thomas. In a huge fight, Diane loses her patience towards Jack and confides to Thomas, the man who made her feel safe and deserving.
How could she feel a deep and passionately strange connection with Thomas than the person who she used to think was the one?
As their bond turns to love, what will happen to them the next morning when Thomas has to leave home to pursue his lifelong dream? Diane faces a crossroad and is forced to choose whether to settle an uncomfortable but a familiar life with her fiancé or to come with him and live life full of adventure with the photographer.
Diane writes her story on the typewriter, ‘The Paper Plane Man.’ As she tries to recall those memories, she looks out the window and sees her daughter, Emma, running around in the field with a paper plane in her hand. She lets the wind glide through the wings of the plane as she holds it up high.
In the end, to whom was Diane fully committed to?
OR: What was the inspiration for your film?
GF: A paper plane, something temporary, simple, and enjoyable, make it fly and would never know where it will land. People could be paper planes, such as love. Incorporate these two ideas, where love and people would fly by like paper planes and not know if it or they will ever come back again.
OR: When did you conceive the idea for your film and how long did it take before it was realized?
GF: I conceived the idea of the film mid-February of 2016, then we started pre-production until we shot the film about 1 month later on March 12,13 and 14 of 2016.
We finished post production on the 1st week of May 2016.
OR: What was the most challenging aspect of working in a short film format?
GF: The most challenging part on working in a short film format is that it is unconventional story telling. It is challenging to make a 3 act based story in a few minutes, so we had to go outside the box and experiment and do something unusual.
OR: What was the most challenging aspect of your production?
GF: During pre-production I suddenly had to go the hospital because I had a ruptured appendix and peritonitis, I had immediate surgery and doctors told me I could have died and I needed to rest.
The savings I had for the film had to go to pay my hospital bills and made the production of my film seem impossible. So I reached up to family members and close friends to donate some money to make this short film possible. It all ended well, the production days and post production were very smooth and everyone was happy of the end result.
OR: Do you have any advice for first-time filmmakers?
GF: Don’t be scared to shoot a film, there will be failures and learn from them. That’s the only way to become better in filmmaking, just keep on shooting and creating content, don’t forget to have a lot of passion for this art, at the end, only the most passionate will survive. I have been doing this since 12 years old. I was only 17 when I made the Paper Plane Man. Never give up, never surrender, follow your dreams until the end of the universe.
