Yellow is a movie short with no dialogue, but the seven-minute Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) 2008 selection is no silent film.

Semih Tareen, native of Turkey and the Seattle Film Institute graduate, wrote, directed, produced, shot, and edited the piece, which was recorded on 16mm film.

The UW molecular biology graduate student also wrote the score for Yellow. This was not the first piece for which he’s gotten a music credit; Tareen scored 17 films and shorts before the 2007 release, and has done almost half a dozen since.

“As a film composer I am usually hired for projects requiring a knowledge of orchestration and the ability to compose for an orchestra,” Tareen said. “That is why my other film music projects are mostly orchestral. Yellow, on the other hand, utilizes a ‘synth-rock-pop’ sound.”

This was just one way for the feature to pay homage to giallo, an Italian horror genre that was popularized in the 1960s by filmmakers like Mario Bava (the man to whom Yellow is officially dedicated), he said.

Giallo is difficult to describe much further beyond that, though you may be amused to know that “giallo” means and is pronounced similarly to “yellow” in Italian.

As a publicity strategy, Tareen made the movie available on YouTube.

“E-mailing the link is so much easier than mailing in a DVD,” Tareen said. “YouTube has provided an audience for the film that would have otherwise never seen it.”

Because of its widespread accessibility, Yellow has received attention from Fangoria, a horror film magazine, and from twitchfilm.net.

There are two actors in the film, presumably on a date. Lisa Beck, who earned a nomination for Best Actress when Yellow was shown at the 2007 Terror Film Festival, plays the woman.

Tareen explains that Beck received the part because she had just the right look for the part: large beautiful eyes, a beautiful face and she could give the perfect frightful look during the audition.

“The stylized nature of giallo films require[s] many snap zooms to the eyes,” Tareen said. “In fact, most of the time, an extreme close up of the eyes [is] used to convey the fear and emotions of the character.”

Tareen said that he plans to use Yellow’s success to make enough money to produce a full-length film, but that film scoring will always be a part of his life.

Yellow will be shown on a bigger screen in the upcoming weeks of this year’s SIFF. The screening date is as of yet unknown.