Director, cinematography, editing, and music: Aaron Dylan Kearns
All acting roles: Aaron Dylan Kearns
Genre: Experimental surreal absurdist fiction
Runtime: 8:54
Budget: $150
Release Date: April 15, 2015
Festivals/screenings: The Counting Man had its world premiere at the 2015 Smells Like Teen Film Festival at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta
An official selection of the Atlanta Independent Film Festival, Pinch & Ouch Theater, February 23, 2017
Synopsis: A hermit obsessing over a numbers station is left to live within an absurd “Twilight Zone” based reality.
It will be either one of the funniest horror films you’ll ever see or one of the most unsettling comedies to ever be made. It is the cinematic rorschach test.
Making The Counting Man:
The Counting Man was my first attempt at making a lengthy work of fiction, my previous film efforts having been concentrated on documentary and music videos. It was what could be considered a one man band effort, as I was the director, the cinematographer, the lone actor, the scriptwriter, the soundtrack composer and editor.
While done in a style that fuses the silent comedies of the 1920s with the German Expressionist era highlighted by films like Nosferatu and Vampyr, The Counting Man acts more as an experiment in surrealism and as a tribute to the absurdist theater movement. This style, along with the short’s grimy black and white cinematography (inspiration for this was partly drawn from the artwork to Killing Joke’s first self titled album) help give the short its own one-of-a-kind atmosphere.
Bloopers and Outtakes from "The Counting Man", 2015
Running time: 1 minute and 47 seconds.
The Trailer:
The poster:
Reviews
"I was very fond of the experimental film titled The Counting Man by Aaron Dylan Kearns. His film was like The Mothman Prophecies and was done in a creative manner.
- VoxATL
