Hey everyone, Adrian here. Today’s blog is all about a short film I randomly found on YouTube that instantly reminded me of the direction we want for our five minute film.
The video is titled “Threat Level: 6” and it is made by a group called BYL Tactical who are military fans and airsoft players based in Hong Kong. Their description says they are a small team of mainlanders living in Hong Kong who create tactical short films for fun.
Let me tell you right now. This video is blockbuster quality. The movement. The realism. The sound design. The costumes. Even the abandoned resort they used as a set felt believable. For a fan made project, this thing goes above and beyond. The crazy part is that it is in another language, but it is still fully entertaining even when you have no idea what they are saying. Everything is communicated visually which is something I want to bring into our own film since we only have five minutes to tell a full story.
The camera shots in this film are what really caught my attention. They used clean close ups, slow reveals, tactical point of view shots and the pacing feels very tight. One thing that stood out the most is their drone shot sequence which reveals the location from above before cutting into the mission. This is something I plan to incorporate into our film. When Diego sends Adrian and Tati to the target house, I want a drone shot revealing the exterior of the location to show scale, danger, and atmosphere before we jump inside.
Watching “Threat Level: 6” made me realize how much style matters in a short film. These guys had no huge budget, no Hollywood equipment, and no studio team, yet the final result looked like a professional action scene straight from a streaming service. It shows that with strong planning and commitment to realism, you can make something powerful with very little.
This video definitely gave us new ideas for how we want our action scenes to feel. The intensity. The silent movement. The way the characters communicate without speaking. All of that fits perfectly with our concept. I am going to keep studying their shot choices because if we can capture even twenty percent of their realism, our film is going to look insane.
More updates coming soon.
