A man is in danger of being crushed by the falling façade of a house. Miraculously he escapes death because there just happens to be a window opening exactly where he is standing (a reference to the famous Buster Keaton scene). The projection that fills the wall and the angle from which the film was shot mean the viewer also undergoes this sensation.
After a course at Goldsmith College in London (where Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas also trained) and the film department of New York University, Steve McQueen (1969, London), the maker of Deadpan, found out that he was mainly interested in the formal aspects of film. What can you do with the camera, what kind of picture does a camera take if you throw it up in the air, what is the effect of filming from unusual angles? By playing with the camera, the maker tries to break out of the stiffness he experiences in the medium.
