Debut: 'Dekalb Elementary'
Writer/Director Reed Van Dyke has transformed an inhumane nightmare of a true story into a heartfelt and humanizing experience with his short film, Dekalb Elementary. Based on the recording of a 911 call from the same elementary school, the film dives into how school administrator Tarra Riggs was confronted by school shooter Bo Mitchell in her school office.
The film’s biggest risks quickly become its greatest strengths. The first is entirely set in one room. Within the first minute or so, the supporting actors leave the office under Bo’s orders leaving us with our two leading actors. Only the 911 operator’s voice remains as a barrier between Bo and Tarra.
The cinematography’s strongest approach to this limited location was playing off the blocking of the characters. Tarra often remains behind her desk in the first half while Bo frequently moves about. He forces viewers to the edges of their seats by stepping out into the hallway of the school fairly early into the film. He later steps outside and fires off warning shots at the responding police in the street. As the story unravels, the camera is careful to never leave us falling down a rabbit hole of repetitive backgrounds and monotonous over-the-shoulder shots.
The other large risk taken on by the film is the lack of a score. The director addresses this in his Director’s Commentary addition of the short by stating he wanted to avoid melodrama in favor of an authentic and heartfelt experience. To convey this, he leaned further into the diegetic sound of the space with sound effects of the office luring us into a familiar space and upending us by crispy gunshots quickly blanketed with eerie silences. This sound design is paired with dialogue that does justice to the actual 911 call recording.
Steven Hall plays a convincing Bo Mitchell. His movement is neither smooth nor rigid but fluid with a lack of thought. His hands frequently move to readjust his weapon’s strap, reminding us our lives are at the mercy of his finger. He allows the weapon to intimidate on his behalf as he speaks calm orders to the faculty in the beginning. It is not until he steps away into an adjacent room to make a phone call that we realize how lost he feels.
Played by Cassandra Rice, Tarra Riggs does a wonderful job chaotically balancing between fearing Bo and empathizing with him. She is the audience’s lightning rod as she tries to communicate his needs to the police and keep her eyes on him without provoking him.
The film uses discipline in sound design, blocking, and restrained performances in favor of big-budget scores, visual effects, and blaring social messages that impede authentic dialogue that grounds us in the most engaging fact of all. This all actually happened to someone and that someone could have been any of us.
