The Enigmatic Frame: Staging the Unseen and Shaping the Mind How can the enigmatic frame serve as a directorial tool to manipulate perception and create narrative ambiguity in experimental horror cinema?

In this exegesis, the film frame is investigated as being a core component of cinematic narration and visual storytelling in filmmaking. The research is a practice-based PhD research project that attempts to better understand the role and presence that the film frame serves as part of an aesthetic system in the production of a horror film. It is presented from my perspective as a film director. The research is the production of a creative artefact, a 71-minute horror film titled Under the Red, and an associated exegesis that serves as an exploration of my practice as the director. The research was designed using the reflective practitioner theoretical framework and the practitioner-based enquiry methodology. A reflective journal was used to document and reflect upon my practice as the creative work was created. The exegesis finds that the frame, as part of an aesthetic system, acts as a temporal window into a story world. Through cinematic narration, it conveys the storyline, characters and settings to an audience. It is capable of showing factual events, before and after they occur. It can also embody a character's individual perspective, showing how they interpret the world through thoughts, feelings and memory. Expanding on this, the research introduces the concept of the enigmatic frame. It is a cinematic perspective that deliberately conceals information from on-screen characters, influencing their behaviour and actions in specific ways. It is not bound by individual perspectives, nor is it interested in factual narration. Instead, it embodies a vague and mysterious force that distorts the story to suit its own agenda, as it celebrates artifice from a higher, detached perspective. The research contributes to the concept of the frame in filmmaking and finds that it is a powerful tool in shaping dramatic storytelling through perspective and story structure.