Office Kingdom

Office Kingdom is a short film created by students from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Scuola Nazionale di Cinema that deals with bureaucracy and mixes fantasy and adventure themes with those of red tape in contemporary offices and state agencies.

Three main characters, a conflict with the environment and a staging that combines office iconography with a fantasy world compose this ambitious short created by four students as their graduation project.

In order to create this imaginative portrait of modern bureaucracy, which is a subject a great percentage of the audience can relate to, the artists have dedicated a lot of work to creating the environments, character designs, stylized aesthetic and various elements that inhabit the office and fantasy worlds. It’s surprising that a project of this size was accomplished by only four artists.

Office Kingdom makes ample use of shot reverse shots for dialogue sequences, screen directions for the main character’s journey through the various environments, parallel editing, cuts on eyesight and changes of rhythm for the action sequences. Conflict, surprise and building of tension are well managed, the short lasts almost 7mins and it never falls flat. Special attention has been dedicated to the expressiveness of the characters, which is of great help for creating and transmitting conflict to the audience. Elements of humor also help spice up the script and the ambiguity in subjectivity in narration brings more layers to the way it can be interpreted.