A tragic psychological thriller of an imperfect perfectionist who is willing to take radical measures in order to achieve perfection.

Tarvi Roos is an Estonian filmmaker surprised us with a delicate, but poised (longer) short called ‘Moments‘ almost two years ago. This time, in a considerably shorter film, Tarvi shows us his darker side with ‘Perfection’: A tragic psychological thriller of an imperfect perfectionist who is willing to take radical measures in order to achieve perfection.

For me, it is a story about the envy of other people. We look at stereotypical figures and see only the surface. The wealthy entrepreneurs, the happy families with perfect children, the smart and overachieving academics who are never wrong. People often look at those so called perfect people and think why can’t they be like this, because who wouldn’t want to be best in their field? The main character is the extreme version of this notion, only he doesn’t know what “his field” is. So, he decides to become someone else. Someone, who is perfect in his eyes.

The film sets an invasive stark tone, embracing personalities and characters. The voice over sets the mood with a chilling and gruntled narration, which at times might feel a little exaggerated, but understood as the film went on. The English narration was noticeably slightly imperfect, but that kind of gave the character and the film’s voice a little more spring.

It all started with an idea to create a film about a thief who is going to steal an identity from a person who is about to commit suicide, because he doesn’t know his purpose in his life and has an identity crisis because of that. This paradoxical idea transformed a lot but it
stayed as an important essence for the story the whole time – the main character is so blind that he cannot see himself for what he truly is.

Shot over a couple of days, the film was made on an extremely tight budget, displaying a great example of what can be made with little to no budget. Attention to detail and camera work can make a film look like it’s on a heavy budget – or at least not show that its on no-budget.

We shot the film with Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera with EF Speedbooster and Nikon 14-24mm lens (modded with EF mount and manual aperture). We shot it in RAW format to get the maximum out of the sensor and the picture Pocket Camera gave us was really beautiful. Both me and the DoP, Risto Niils, wanted to achieve the 35mm film look. It resulted us with 300GB of data, but it was all worth it. Pocket Camera had LOTS of flaws but we somehow managed to overcome them. Adobe Premiere was used for editing, After Effects for visual effects, Davinci Resolve for color grading and Pro Tools for sound.