The Palm Rest Motel | Episodes 1-3
Credits — Original Composition · Creative Direction · Writing · Production · Editing · Sound Design
Palm Rest Motel began with a place before it had a story. I imagined a motel that felt familiar enough to enter and strange enough to question once you were inside. A place operating according to rules the visitor, and the audience, doesn't yet understand. Built as a series of vertical shorts, each chapter reveals only a little more: a room, a vending machine, an impossible dinner button, a pool that seems almost too inviting. The ordinary becomes surreal slowly, without anyone stopping to explain why. I wanted Palm Rest to feel less like watching a story and more like discovering a place. The kind you somehow wandered into and become curious enough to keep exploring. Some places aren't on any map. You just end up there.
Still Frames
Stills — This Place Is Not What It Seems
Creative Decisions
Vertical by Design
Palm Rest was conceived for the phone rather than adapted to it. The vertical frame makes rooms, hallways, doors and figures feel enclosed while allowing the motel to reveal itself in pieces. The format became part of the architecture of the story.
Reveal, Don't Explain
Each chapter introduces one new piece of the motel's logic without explaining the last. Room 17 leads to the vending machine. The vending machine leads to B3. B3 changes what the motel seems capable of. Curiosity becomes the thread connecting the episodes.
Making the Strange Ordinary
The surreal is treated as part of the environment rather than an event. Vending-machine hums, button clicks, air conditioning and pool water ground impossible moments in familiar sound. The stranger the motel becomes, the more important those ordinary details become.