Casey O'Kelly
Overexposure is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi screenplay set in a future Dublin, now an irradiated exclusion zone. Rue, a member of a survey team, is sent to investigate the dead city, only to uncover something unsettling. Within the zone, the dead are reappearing as ghostly apparitions, visible only through photography and contactable via radio signals. These spectral echoes offer a haunting possibility: the chance to speak with lost loved ones. As the boundaries between memory and reality begin to blur, Rue must confront the pull of the past and resist the fatal allure of reunion.
The aim of this project is to explore themes of grief and toxic relationships. While in a literal sense the ghosts are dead, thematically they represent relationships which have ended. The central question of Rue's arc is whether they can let these relationships go, and choose to live for themself rather than someone else. In essence, the grief being explored here is for a relationship as much as it is for a specific person.
I am very satisfied with the outcome of this first draft. The necessary groundwork has been put in place so that I know precisely where to start improving and progressing it for future drafts. The story is a worthy expansion of the short film on which it was based — the world-building of the short has been preserved and built upon, and elements of character and motivation which were necessarily simplistic in the short have been reworked with added complexity and specificity.
The purpose of this thesis is to examine the purpose of the wide shot in the world-building of contemporary science fiction cinema. To this end, the works of two prominent figures in that area — Denis Villeneuve and Gareth Edwards — will be used as case studies to examine how the wide shot is used by two contemporary directors with similar taste but markedly different styles of filmmaking. The history and evolution of the wide shot and film grammar more broadly will also be investigated to support the two main case studies.
Casey (she/they) is a screenwriter, director, and multidisciplinary filmmaker with a strong background in cinematography and editing. Driven by a vivid imagination, they are particularly drawn to stories rooted in science fiction and magical realism. In 2023, Casey directed The Image of Her, a short film that laid the foundation for their major project; the feature-length screenplay Overexposure. As a queer, neurodivergent, and transgender creative, Casey is deeply committed to uplifting marginalised voices, both through their storytelling and within the industry at large.
