VISUAL STYLE

“First Morning” is a film about the aftermath of war. I needed to establish that from the beginning. The documentary sequence used in the opening serves as the Prologue. It takes the spectator directly to the past and tells a small piece of history through visuals and voice over. With the narration, which belongs to the Tuan character, a personal reference is made and the audience becomes involved in a person’s life, not a documentary. With the visuals, the audience becomes immediately aware of the hardships that were endured by this narrator’s family. After this sequence, the film jumps immediately into the present. From that point on, the spectator is taken on an emotional journey, with the images of destruction and survival lingering in the back of their minds. They are not watching a film about the war, but they know that the family in this story is somehow living in the shadows of a ravaged past.

“First Morning” tells a very personal, very intimate story. I wanted to keep the audience as close to the characters as possible. There are a few scattered exterior shots of sterile suburban neighborhoods and city streets. However, the real story is happening at home. The real conflict is taking place behind closed doors. For Linh, I wanted to create a sense of entrapment through framing and the use of cramped environments.

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