HopkinsCinemAddicts

Sex and the Domestic Sphere in Slasher Movies (Charlotte)

One of the most important elements of a slasher movie is its setting. Two of the most iconic slasher movies ever made, John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), make great use of their settings, and are defined by their settings. Halloween takes place in suburbia, while Texas takes place in the middle of nowhere. While these two settings are very different, these filmmakers seem to be using these settings to communicate similar messages. Both movies seem to be warning the audience about the danger of disrupting the typical American domestic sphere and specifically the power of female sexuality to disrupt that sphere.

Halloween tells the story of a psychopath named Michael Myers, who kills his older sister, Judith, as a young boy. He escapes a mental hospital 15 years later and goes on a killing spree on Halloween night, targeting a group of babysitters.

Toward the end of Halloween Laurie finds the bodies of her friends in a bedroom. The majority of the movie takes place within suburban homes, and this is an obvious disruption of the domestic sphere—extreme violence in such an intimate space. Another theme that permeates the film is one of morality. Laurie, the only one of these teenagers to survive the film, is also the only one that is a virgin. The choice to put these young bodies in a space associated not only with love and domesticity, but also with sex, is a clear statement. Teen sexuality and premarital sexuality leads to the degradation of the traditional American home.

It is also crucial to mention that Annie is splayed out on the bed, dead and only partially clothed, with the stolen headstone of Judith Myers above her. Michael also killed Judith shortly after she engaged in sexual activity, and while she was still naked. Michael’s murder of Annie is a reenactment of his murder of his own sister fifteen years prior, which, it seems, was itself “punishment” for her teen sexuality. However, even though it seems that Michael is trying to punish these teenagers for engaging in sex, it also seems as though he is sexually fascinated by them. He kills them extremely intimately, and he moves their bodies after he kills them. The way that the bodies are arranged in the bedroom is carefully curated.

Michael then tries to stab Laurie, slashing the sleeve of her shirt. Given how close he was to her at the time it seems possible that he was not trying to stab her, but rather was trying to cut her clothes off. The ensuing struggle can be read as one for Laurie’s life or as one for Laurie’s body.

It is important to note that he uses a kitchen knife as his weapon. He is repurposing a tool from perhaps the most domestic part of the home, the kitchen, the hearth, and using it against the home. That points to how he is disrupting the domestic sphere throughout the film.

Laurie flees to the kitchen—the hearth, the supposed safest part of the home—and locks the door. She struggles to open an exterior door that’s blocked with a rake—yet another domestic tool. It is noteworthy that none of the weapons or obstacles used in the home (with the exception of the gun that Loomis uses) are from outside of the home. In every case, from Michael’s kitchen knife to the rake to the knitting needle and coat hanger that Laurie uses to defend herself, these are emphatically domestic items being turned against their natural environment. This is not a home invasion, but rather a home corruption.

Michael, using brute force, punches a hole through the kitchen door and steps inside. The shot of him entering the kitchen is disturbing. He looks so out of place not only because he’s a violent criminal in a mask, but also because he looks too big. He is taller than the refrigerator. He quite literally does not fit in this space.

Laurie narrowly escapes by breaking a window—by, in her own way, corrupting this domestic space—and we get a long shot of her fleeing the home. Suddenly, this warm, tight-knit neighborhood feels cavernous and abandoned. She screams for help, but no one comes to her aid. The shot is long and without cuts. The camera pans to follow her, but stays fairly still. This kind of camera movement turns the audience into yet another bystander, watching this unfold without helping her.

Their struggle continues. Laurie survives and for a moment it seems that Michael is dead. However, it is important that the movie does not end on this note. We cut back to see that Michael is no longer lying “dead” on the ground. This is followed by several shots of the interior of the house and the neighborhood, accompanied by Michael’s heavy, masked breathing. The implication is that he could be anywhere. These domestic spaces are not safe.

Texas tells the story of two siblings, Sally and Franklin, who travel with a group of friends to visit their grandfather’s grave. On their way back, they decide to stop by their grandparent’s old home and there encounter a psychopathic family of cannibals.

In many ways, Texas is a far more ham-fistedly told story. The corruption of the domestic sphere is obvious, with the cannibals’ home being covered in blood and innards, full of furniture made of human bones and skin, and the dried up, mummified remains of grandparents hidden in the attic. It is difficult to think of a more corrupt home environment. However, there is one less obvious and more subtle aspect of the home that is corrupted. There is no real female figure in the house. While their grandmother is technically present, she is dead and has no agency. This is a statement about what happens when women are absent from the home—men go insane.

The ending sequence of the film begins with Sally trapped in the cannibals’ home being tormented during a kind of “dinner party”. It is a confusing and disorienting series of close ups of the men cheering each other on as one tries to kill Sally with a hammer. This, too, is a weapon found inside the home, but it is more garage than kitchen. It is an emphatically more masculine tool than the knife in Halloween. This is a home that is devoid of the feminine. However, these men seem to be aware of that. During this sequence, Leatherface is dressed up as a woman, in make-up and a wig. He is play-acting the role of the “woman of the house”. It is also possible that the mask he wears is made of the skin of women specifically, in which case he is really trying to embody a woman in the most literal sense. This seems to stand in contrast with all of the anti-women language being used during the attack, such as, “Kill that bitch!” These men seem to have a real hatred for women as much as they have a fascination with them.

Like in so many horror films, the villain here is a visibly terrifying, ugly man who seeks to hurt a young, beautiful woman. It is possible that violence is the only way these men feel they can gain access to a woman’s body, and it is something of a replacement for sexual intimacy. This seems to be the case in Halloween, and certainly seems to be the case here as well. During the attack on Sally, one man holds her arms behind her back. They are crowded around her, physically intimidating her and physically forcing themselves on her. There is a close-up shot of her torn shirt and the bare skin of her back. It is terrifying, but there is a nod to the sexual. It can be read as a pseudo rape scene. It makes sense, though, that this takes place in a dining room rather than a bedroom, because, of course, once she is dead these men plan to eat her. At this dinner party, she is the dinner. This reversal, of turning women who theoretically should be warm, motherly creatures that make dinner into dinner is an ultimate corruption of the domestic sphere. A house without a woman, without a mother, becomes violent and disturbed.

Sally, like Laurie, escapes by smashing a window. She corrupts the domestic sphere further in order to escape it. We immediately get a shot of her hitting the ground, with open land in front of her and all around her. But, this gives the audience a sense of hope and freedom rather than a sense of helplessness. The suburban neighborhood in Halloween felt far more dangerous, because there exists a false sense of hope within it. Laurie is surrounded by people, people she knows, but none of them are willing to help her. Sally is alone, and yet she is the one who finds help.

Sally takes off running, and a truck driver stops and helps her to fight off Leatherface. A man in a pickup truck then lets her jump in the bed of his truck and helps her escape. It is odd that in such an isolated, desolate place, she manages to find help. The film may be arguing that it is best to not trust domestic spaces at all, for it is in a house that Sally is attacked, and it is out in the wild that she finds protection.

While Sally escapes with her life, the film ends on a similar note as Halloween. Sally watches from the truck, hysterical, as Leatherface waves his chainsaw around. He is not dead. He is still out there.

In conclusion, both of these examples of the slasher genre contain compelling commentary about the American home and about the role of sexuality within the home. Both seem to argue that the safety of the home is a myth, and that the domestic sphere is far easier to topple than we might like to believe, especially in the 70s, the age of women’s liberation. The changing role of women in this time scared people, and so it is fitting that scary movies would be made about it.

Cocaine to London: What Comes Next... The End

This post will be my final post in the fun self-exploration and retelling of my filmmaking process that has been this blog. In the six posts I have made before this one, I have explored the sometimes inspiring and sometimes depressingly stressful moments that can arise in the pre-production process and while the process has not yet finished, it is nearing the end, the transition into the production phase of Cocaine to London.

See, just ten minutes before beginning to write this post, I sent in my request to the JHU-MICA film cage, reserving the equipment that will be used to film my short film in just over a month’s time. In two days I will have my last camera test with my camera team, refining and perfecting the last of the complex, handheld shots that we will have in the film. All of our actors have been officially casted. Our shooting schedule is due in a week. Everything that we began over two months ago is finally reaching its end. To celebrate this moment, I would like to explore what comes next: the last few elements of pre-production I have to do and what I should begin to expect from the production and post-production of the film. 

As for pre-production, much of my work now is in directing my actors and making sure they are fully prepared for the shoot that is to come. The main aspect of this element is organizing and leading table reads for my actors where we can go over the script and the required nuances of each character, together. Now because all of my actors are in different locations, some as far as New York, and because my script is quite long, these meetings will have to be over Zoom and spread across multiple meetings. I am very excited for this process, though, as it is the first indication of what the final product, the final performance will be. I will be able to hear my work finally be read aloud by the people who will actually be the characters, the first time that the script will truly be brought to life.

From there, all that is left is working with my camera team and production team to confirm the remaining nuances of the shoot from making sure that we all fully understand the shots to officially preparing the food pick-up situations and more… the tying of the final loose ends.

The shoot dates for Cocaine to London.

And then… it is filming time. My shoot will be a 7 day production with an added 8th prep day at the start. Based on the rough draft shooting schedules we have now and the total shooting length we have for the film, it will be a long shoot. It will also be a hard shoot at times. Whether it be the film’s inclusion of musical elements, or the difficulty of some of the very emotional acting performances, there are a lot of aspects of the shoot that can go wrong. I can’t say I’m not nervous, but by doing this blog series, I have learned all I can really do is make sure that I am fully aware of everything I need to do and make sure I give the entire crew the amount of information they need to feel just as comfortable. I trust everyone on the cast and crew and know that as long as we are all on the same page, we can overcome the difficult elements of this shoot.

Once the shoot is done, it is on to editing. I will work with our local production service building Digital Cave for color grading and color correction. We will hire a sound mixer and editor to create the best digital scoundscape of the film possible (a very important part of the film). And then, in early April to late May, Cocaine to London will premiere at Studio North’s Premiere Festival at the Parkway Theatre. There, this year-plus long journey will finally reach its climax. The work I have spent so long on will finally see the big screen.

Before I submitted this blog post, I looked back through the other six I had written. Seeing it all laid out, the entire process, it really put into perspective just how quick it all felt. It really does feel like just yesterday that I sat down, struggling with writer’s block, and crafted the first draft of what would ultimately become Cocaine to London. It was not always a great time, but right now, seeing this pre-production phase being almost completed, I can’t help but feel happy and proud. I know it is just a short film, but it is my first short film and the first time, maybe ever, that I have put this much effort into something. I don’t know how it will turn out, but all I can do is keep going and put as much effort into it as I can.

For now, I wait.

Cocaine to London COMING SOON!

Until some next time…

                        Devin

Afire (2023): An Egoistic Writer’s Late Awakening

In the melody of Wallner's “In my Mind,” Christian Petzold's Afire opens with a tracking shot of receding trees, as a car is in motion. Through the glass window, the film shows Leon, a writer in his 30s, dozing in the passenger seat, his face bathed in the fading green and yellow, unaffected by the changing world. He is self-absorbed, but the soothing scenery suggests a kind of redemption. A world like poetry awaits his discovery. “Something’s not right,” his friend Felix says, pulling Leon from his reverie. “It’s misfiring.” Leon insists that he hears nothing. He is awake but inattentive to his surroundings, reminiscent of a dreamlike state. Finally, the car breaks down on the way to the holiday home.

An extreme long shot shows Leon sitting on a fallen tree with the luggage when Felix checks the path. The forest becomes overpowering. The shriek of birds prompts Leon to turn his head, peering deep into the woods, but he finds no anomalies. It's only when he hears the whir of helicopters that he stands up and examines his surroundings. “Felix,” he calls, frightened by his friend’s “hello” from behind. Enraged, Leon punches his friend; he is egoistic and proud, but the encroaching danger—later revealed to be a forest fire—alongside his friend’s trick indicates that he is not invincible. From the humming dryer and the dispersed lingerie upon arrival that indicates the presence of an unexpected housemate (Nadja) to Felix’s persistent invitation to go swimming, Leon can no longer engage with writing, his pride at risk.

Caspar David Friedrich - Moon Rising Over the Sea. Flickr, by Miguel Velasquez (2022).

A pivotal moment that challenges Leon's ego is when, during dinner, Nadja’s friend Devid, a lifeguard, recounts a one-night stand interrupted by a delivery man who threatened to “spray [him] gay” if he did not accept a rug. Nadja, acquainted with the tale, sporadically erupts in laughter, refills Leon’s glass, and dispels bugs for Devid. Felix, however, is drawn to the story with his brows furrowed. Devid asks Felix to smell his shirt, which he claims still contains the smell of the spray. When Felix lowers his head, Devid gives him an unexpected kiss. An amateur storyteller not only commands the screen for five minutes but physically performs the love that he wants the audience to experience. Jealous, Leon, the real writer, interrogates Devid about his job as a lifeguard, which angers Felix. The three friends leave the table and go for a swim; only Nadja turns her head back and asks, “Aren’t you coming?” But Leon is too stubborn to take this second chance. “My work won’t allow it.” Alone, Leon covers his face with his hands. “I’m such an arsehole,” he murmurs.

He is always late to epiphany. At the beach, Nadja chastises Leon for not noticing that his publisher Helmut has been admitted to an oncology ward. “You see nothing,” she says. Leon watches her back as she leaves. A jump cut fast-forwards to Leon burying his face in his hands, which mirrors his fragmented, distressed mental state. When he lowers his hands and looks up, the distant forest emits a large plume of smoke and fire, finally melting away his sense of self. He runs back to the house, informs Nadja to leave, and asks for forgiveness. “From the very first moment, I was in love with you,” he says, confessing his vulnerability. But this time, Nadja does not give him a second chance as the police arrive to report Felix and Devid's deaths in the forest fire. Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Andata” plays in the background, soft like funeral music, grieving for the two pairs of lovers. 

Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Scandinavian, Finnish, Burnt Forest 1904. Flickr, by Asar Studios (2015).

And the music continues to the montage narrated by Helmut based on Leon’s new book dedicated to Felix and Devid. Leon, the author, no longer owns his writing; instead, Helmut, the dying patient, becomes the unlikeable narrator, indicating a sense of redemption for Leon’s ignorance. Starting from a piglet burnt to death, the camera slowly tilts to reveal the forest reduced to stumps and ashes. The voice-over laments, “By the time they realized, it was too late. The fire was already around them.” The film cuts to a scene at the morgue. A close-up shot reveals two dark hands intertwined. Nadja weeps while Leon restrains his tears. Only the voice-over gives him a sense of interiority. “Instead of crying, he thought of the image of the lovers in Pompeii.” His friends die, yet in their passing, they teach Leon about love that goes beyond the self and life. The montage ends with Nadja leaving and Leon visiting the beach. At night, he sits down in the sand and looks at the glowing sea. It is a bit late, but the sea is forgiving.

Pompeii Sitting Man. Flickr, by Andrew Malone (2014).

Cocaine to London: A Week of Breakthroughs

During my last post, I hated filmmaking. I am happy to report that things are looking up! I would like to take this post to update you all on our progress, primarily with the results of our Seed&Spark campaign as well as all of the meetings and decisions made over the last few weeks (I had a very busy Thanksgiving break). While this whole process is still extremely stressful, time-consuming and bothersome, these steps forward are reassuring. I can feel my second wind coming and I am very excited.

To begin, you’ll remember that we began our fundraising campaign through Seed&Spark and after a few days of filming a promo video and many more days of filling out all of the necessary text boxes on the site itself, we launched it to the public. Well, I am happy to announce that after a month of that site being up, we obliterated our goal of $3500! I am very grateful for support from my circle and even some complete strangers and am excited to put their contributions to good use. The extra money that we were able to raise also allowed us to tweak our budget sheet, giving us much more leeway for elements like craft services (food), production design and post-production elements. Again, I am very thankful to everyone who contributed and promise we will use your generosity well!

Our fundraising announcement photo posted on our Instagram! @cocainetolondon

With this big step completed, we were able to get the ball rolling on many other aspects of pre-production. For one, with this tweaked budget sheet being more or less set in stone, I was able to start messaging and meeting with the many departments and get their aspects of the pre-production phase started. Most notably, I am talking about the PD and costuming departments, who I was able to have meetings with, giving them their total budget so they can start shopping for the many necessary props and outfits which bring my script’s world to life.

On top of meeting with these departments, I also began meeting with my lighting department and my assistant director. This is because, at around the same time that the Seed&Spark came to a close, me and my camera team were able to finish our first draft of the shot list for the film! This is perhaps an even bigger moment than the Seed&Spark completing because while money is cool and all, it cannot compare to the creative milestones. After five weeks and about 12 hours of reading through the script and visualizing shots, we had created an outline for the film. The whole short film had been made, compiled together in a mess of Zoom sketches and incomprehensible hand-written notes… but it was there… in 69 meticulously planned shots.

This moment allowed us to begin creating everything we needed for shooting from the official Google Sheets based shot list to our shooting schedule (which is currently in the process of being built). It also made the entire shoot that much more imaginable. There are a lot of small things that go ignored in the grandiose discussion of set life, from where the cast and crew will relax between shots, to where to set up the video village (a location where the crew can watch the shot as it is being filmed) to how best we can have the crew multi task to finish the day quicker. With this shot list done, I was able to more easily visualize all of these gears in the giant mechanism that is making a film, fleshing the whole process out in my mind and making me much more confident in the feasibility and enjoyability that is possible on this set.

A sneak peek of our beautiful shot list!

Finally, we had another major breakthrough in the last week, this time in the casting department. You’ll remember, I was quite stressed out last post regarding our casting as we were having a very hard time casting our lead. I’m happy to report that with a lot of perseverance and a lot of cold DM’s on Instagram, we were able to secure many applicants and officially cast our protagonist! I am so happy with the person we picked, both for Viv (the lead) and for the recording engineer who we were able to recast successfully. Officially finding these two people leaves us with only one more character left to cast and a big weight off of our shoulders. Just like with the budget and the shot list, all of these breakthroughs help make the entire shoot so much more imaginable. I can see it, just over the horizon.

This does not mean we are in the clear. There are still a lot more things we have to do, but the ball is rolling on all of them and we are still within the schedule that we had created for ourselves so long ago at our first producer meeting. All I can do is keep it moving and look forward to the future, a topic I would like to explore in my next, and perhaps, final post, but we’ll deal with that when we get there.

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

The Return (2003): The Killing of a God-like Father

Green water ripples like a kaleidoscope, accompanied by a low, raspy melody that hints at the ocean's hidden secret. So begins Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return. Below the surface, the camera navigates the desolate seabed, revealing ancient coral reefs before settling on a sunken rowboat, its prow tied with a rope. Underwater, the boat is no longer visible to the world, yet the rope suggests its reachable presence, akin to the knowledge of God through faith. Built around days of the week, the film starts on Sunday, the weekly memorial of Jesus’s Resurrection. Two brothers, Andrei (14) and Ivan (12), alongside their friends, challenge each other to leap into the sea from a diving board. In an overhead shot, the two siblings stand on the board, their presence diminished by the vast ocean. Andrei follows suit, but Ivan steps back, fearing heights and the water suggestive of God. Likewise, when their father returns home after 12 years, the two brothers respond differently: Andrei is accepting while Ivan is skeptical, if not fearful, of this stranger’s appearance. So for Ivan, part of growing up is to come to terms with the unknown, whether the father, the ocean, or God.

Mantegna, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, ca. 1483; Brera Gallery, Milan. Flickr, by Richard Mortel (2019).

In fact, the father is like God, appearing out of nowhere. When the mother announces the news, she simply says, “Your father’s sleeping,” as if his existence does not need to be confirmed. When Andrei gently pushes the door open, the two brothers see their father lying on the bed with the sheet covering him from the waist down, his head slightly tilted, similar to Andrea Mantegna’s The Lamentation over the Dead Christ. Andrei, like the mourners in the painting, is close to tears as Ivan hastily searches the attic, sifting through a dusty box. He discovers an illustrated Bible concealing an old photograph of his father. A close-up shot juxtaposes the foreground family photo with the sacrifice of Isaac, Ivan’s doubt overpowering faith. At dinner, after asking the mother to pour the brothers some wine, the father proposes a fishing trip with his sons. The Ichthys standing for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Our Savior” in ancient Greek further highlights the father’s God-like presence.

Church of the Most Holy Rosary, Tullow, County Carlow, Ireland. Wikimedia Commons, by Andreas F. Borchert (2013).

But the father, from forcing Ivan to call him “Dad” to engaging in street justice, is like Matthew’s Jesus, a violent revolutionary who supposes, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father (Matthew 10:34-36).” Without faith, Ivan is like the doubting Thomas who questions his father’s past and intentions. On the first night, Andrei and Ivan lie side by side in the tent. Andrei has his eyes closed when the still-awake Ivan initiates a conversation about their father's remark that he once had too many fish. “Where could that have happened?” Ivan asks. Andrei nonchalantly responds, “In the north, maybe.” Ivan shrugs off Andrei’s elbow as if to shake off his brother's faith. “He’s just lying,” Ivan concludes. “He could be a gangster. He could slit our throats.” As the father becomes more abusive and authoritarian, Ivan, in the next tent scene, promises that he will kill their father if he touches him. The frustrated Ivan then opens the journal and writes down his promise, foreshadowing its happening. Next to him, Andrei, head down, can only watch with concern like a helpless disciple.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas. Wikimedia Commons, by Sailko (2016).

In a fight with his father, Ivan, holding a knife, cries, “I could love you if you were different, but you’re terrible.” The father tries to approach and reason, but Ivan drops the knife and runs away. He climbs up to a watchtower and threatens to jump down if the father follows him. Close to executing his unrealized jump, Ivan, however, witnesses his father's fatal fall from the ladder. Echoing the diving scene, the film shows an overhead shot of the dead father on the ground, with a fallen log beside him. The doubting Thomas finally senses Jesus’s wounds. In the end, the two brothers witness their father's body descending into the ocean, along with all the rights and wrongs. The identity of the father, whether perceived as God or the Devil, becomes inconsequential when Ivan calls out, “Dad,” finally conquering his fear or lack of faith. But this achievement is not a result of taking a heroic leap but of enduring the agony that defines the adult world.

Cocaine to London: Casting

In my previous blog post, I discussed me and my producers hitting a major milestone in the pre-production phase: launching our Seed&Spark page and beginning to fundraise for our project. It was a moment that took a lot of planning, hard work and energy out of me and while I wish I could say that it was met with a moment of peace and bliss… I would be gravely lying.

See, the reality of the situation is that finishing the Seed&Spark process gave me a weird feeling; an odd, unexplainable mix of adrenaline-fueled excitement and dread. Dread for how much more had to be done and how time had already ticked so far away. At this point we were already almost three months into the pre-production process and I was very proud of the progress, we still had a lot more to go. At this point, the excitement of first starting the process was starting to wane and all of our work ethics were going along with it. Also, classes were starting to ramp up in intensity and I knew this would affect everyone’s availability. So immediately the next day, fueled by both excitement and fear, I began on the other major aspect of the pre-production process: the casting.

In our initial meeting, my producers and I were able to create the Backstage page for the film and even before I finished the Seed&Spark, I finished up the necessary requirements for this page as it seemed easier and I wanted to make sure that we got started on casting as early as possible. The requirements for a Backstage account, are similar to See&Spark in some ways as they require elements like a logline, a list of genres, shoot dates, etc. However, with it being a casting site, most of the preliminary information is relative to the characters of the film. I had to explain each character, giving the applicants information about their physical features such as gender and race (if applicable), their required talents such as singing, playing guitar, yelling (all of which are very relevant to my script) and also just information on the character’s headspace so that the actor can give the best performance they can.

The homepage to our Backstage listing!

It is this ability to give a performance that is why we chose to use Backstage for this process. The other major aspect of creating our Backstage listing is the inclusion of Sides for each character. Sides are a small section of the script that the site shows to all applicants which allows them to record a virtual audition video to see both their acting skills as a whole, but also their synergy with the role itself. Luckily, I found that my script gave each character a lot of really big, important moments that require strong acting that I could send for each role. While the script would change throughout this process, rendering some of the Sides outdated, they still helped show the actor’s ability to portray the character and I was able to cast multiple people based on these Sides.

However, it is not all smooth. We were successfully able to cast two of our characters very easily in the antagonist and his father (the lead singer and drummer of the band respectively) but the other roles turned out to be much trickier. For one, there was a character of a Camera Guy who we successfully casted and then was sadly written out of the script a month later. We had to sadly tell the actor for the camera guy that his role had been cut which was disappointing considering his acting ability, but it did give us practice in giving people bad news, a reality we will have to become accustomed to. At the same time, we casted the role of the recording engineer, however recently learned that the timing would no longer work for her as she would have to travel a long way for the shoot and with the actor’s strike recently lifting, she did not want to miss out on opportunities in her own area. This also turned out to be okay in the end as luckily we had a lot of applicants for this role and are currently in the process of interviewing two more possible actors for the role.

A still from our first Zoom casting interview!

The most worrisome aspect of this casting process, an aspect that has still not been solved, is casting our last two characters: the mother character and her daughter… who is the lead of the film! Part of the worry is my own pickiness, with this lead having a lot of tough scenes that do not work if the performance is not as perfect as it could be, but one of the major issues with this casting was the amount of skills our lead needs to have. From playing the bass to playing the acoustic guitar to singing to being able to scream, we were already casting a shallow net made shallower by the fact that we wanted them to be within the area due to our struggling budget.

Now, usually I end these posts with a shift to how we learned from the experiences we completed and how they gave me excitement for the film, but the reality is… this casting process has really been pissing me off. I will instead end this post by speaking to the world of the Internet and requesting that if anyone is at all interested in filling our remaining roles or knows of people who would be, to message this email: [email protected]. Shameless plug, I know, I know, but we are getting desperate and why not use every platform I have.

Thank you in advance and sorry for the non-optimistic ending. Maybe next week, I’ll be less annoyed by the filmmaking process. Anyways, thanks for reading.

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

The Eight Mountains (2022): From a City Boy to a Displaced Backpacker

A large pine tree at the foot of the mountain occupies the center of the frame, surrounded by rows of smaller pine trees. The sun shines down, casting a warm, golden light. Nature emanates tranquility and a voice-over breaks the silence: “I didn’t expect to find a friend like Bruno in my life.”  A match cut to a tall, thin tree standing alone against a cloudy sky introduces the other side of the mountain: a desolate, unforgiving summit where life can barely survive. The voice-over bridges the gap. “Nor that friendship was a place where you put down roots, that remains waiting for you.”  So begins Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains, where the speaker of these opening lines, Pietro, searches for his place in the world through the mountain and Bruno, whom he meets on a childhood vacation in the Italian Alps. The two sides of the mountain, two aspects of nature, as welcoming, hospitable, and harsh, unforgiving are established in the opening frames, as are the connection for Pietro between Bruno and nature, in all its dimensions. 

Valle d'Aosta. Flickr, by R Boed (2015).

After the title, the film shows the young Pietro (11) looking at a mountain range in the background through an open window. Meditative, he sits within the wooden frame, a barrier that separates him from the mountain village where his parents have rented a house. He is still contained by the city life he has left behind. His red shirt, however, implies the innate vigor that will sustain his quest for nature’s freedom. An off-screen voice calls, “Bruno,” and Pietro stands up to take a closer look; the voice is like a calling. Then the young Bruno, Pietro's age, appears, tending a cow under his aunt’s command. Only 14 villagers are left in the depopulated mountain village. It's a hard life, and the child Bruno helps with the demanding milking and grazing duties. But Pietro, too young to understand the mountain’s cruelty, feels only delight as he and Bruno become friends, and he is guided out into the natural setting.

When his father Giovanni dies, Pietro (31) without a wife or a steady job returns to the long-forgotten mountain where Bruno conveys Giovanni’s final wish: to build a house on the mountain. Pietro looks at the pile of wood he inherits and says, “It’s a ruin,” as if referring to his life. Bruno suggests that they build the house together, but Pietro declines. “I’m very clumsy.” Only when Bruno assures that he will teach Pietro does he agree to work on the project. When Bruno walks away, Pietro still sitting on the wood says, “Thank you,” unclear if it refers to the upcoming construction or Bruno’s support. On the first day, they dismantle the original structure, kicking down the rocks. Pietro unearths a sapling beneath the wood and transplants it to a nearby field. Destruction of the old is followed by the nurturing of a new life; the juxtaposition suggests that aside from his father’s last wish, the building of a house is a means for Pietro to sort out his life. Indeed, after the construction, Bruno marries Lara, raises a daughter, and tends to the pasture in the Alps while Pietro picks up writing and visits Nepal, a country most synonymous with the Himalayas, the youngest fold mountains. Through hiking, Pietro finds his place in the world as he documents his travels and publishes a book.

Drawing, Details of Mountain Sheds, Houses and a Rock, Bernese Alps, Switzerland; Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900); Switzerland; graphite on light gray paper; Sheet: 11.7 x 20.5 cm (4 5/8 x 8 1/16 in.); Gift of Louis P. Church; 1917-4-165.

Back in Italy, Pietro reunites with Bruno and shares a story he hears when he travels. The flashlight strapped to Pietro’s forehead illuminates the dark house, indicating a newfound wisdom. A bit tipsy, he draws a circle in the notebook and divides it into eight pieces that represent “eight mountains and eight seas, and in the middle is Mount Sumeru,” the center of the world in Buddhist cosmology. Pietro asks, “Who will have learned more, the one who has traveled the eight mountains and the eight seas, or the one who has reached the top of Mount Sumeru?” Bruno says that he is the one who has reached Mount Sumeru and that Pietro travels the eight mountains. Pietro seconds the idea only to add that he is the one who wins. Partly due to the pride of being at the top, partly due to his profound tie to the mountain, Bruno chooses to die alone in the mountain house giving up his family when he loses his pasture, his purpose in life, due to mismanagement.

Cosmological Mandala with Mount Meru. Wikimedia Commons, by Metropolitan Museum of Art (2017).

But is Bruno a loser? When the rescuers cut a hole in the roof with a chainsaw, the mountain house through which Pietro reclaims his agency becomes a site marked by a void. Perhaps there is no victory, as Pietro’s voice-over concludes, “Nothing is left to do but wander around the eight mountains, for those who, like me, on the first and highest, have lost a friend.”

Cocaine to London: The Promo Video

One of the most integral parts of ensuring that we were able to keep on track of the timeline we had created (as shown in the previous blog post) was filming our promotional video. This would serve as something like the trailer for the film (although nowhere near as high-budget and cinematic as trailers often are), a way of introducing the project, its goals, our crew and more, while also doing perhaps the single most important task in a film pre-production: raising money. 

See, for the first few months of us officially beginning pre-production on COCAINE TO LONDON, the only thing we cared about was the budget. The amount we were able to raise would determine everything. It would determine if we could cast actors from out of state (as we would have to accommodate their gas/train prices and housing) or whether we would have to cast locally. It would determine how much we could spend on creating the songs for the film, as well as how much we could spend on the instruments and other production design elements and most importantly it would determine if the people on crew would be able to eat a full Potbelly sandwich or would have to again settle for just a half one every meal (we all are okay with these conditions, don’t worry). 

In order to obtain this figure, though, we had to create our Seed&Spark page (a page that is open for contributions for the next 5 days only, so check it out here, sorry for the plug). On this page, we had to define the components of the story from the plot, to the crew behind the project to the reason behind why I want to make this to begin with. The crown jewel of the site though is the first thing you see when you open the link: the promo video. So before, we could move forward anywhere else, we had to create this first.

The homepage of our Seed&Spark website!

It started, like everything else I do, with a script I scribbled together at 3am. This script would not go through many changes, but then would proceed to almost be completely ignored on the day of the shoot as it simply was not at all funny… my bad. In many ways though, this process was our test run of a lot of the ideas and desires we had for the actual shoot (minus the part where my script wasn’t funny).

After the script was made, we began making the shot list and shooting schedule, which would help us gauge how long some of our shots in the real film would take and how feasible they were to begin with. We did many similar techniques and ideas that we would employ in the actual shoot in January such as the long, tracking shot and the two angles we would use for our talking head portions of the film. This gave us practice and knowledge of these shots, how difficult they were, what we would have to prepare for, etc… and boy, did we need that. 

Not only were both shots much harder to light than we anticipated (especially with the much smaller crew we had to employ for the promo video due to filming it over the summer in Baltimore), but we also learned that the teleprompter we had planned on using to make our actor’s jobs easier for the talking head sections worked as a super strong matte box, darkening the image to the point that it was unusable. This forced us to have to create a second day to the originally one day promo video production, but it allowed us to solve this talking head problem, which means we already know what to do when we eventually have to repeat the setup on set. We also sadly had to cut the moving shot that we had filmed for the film (again, it was not funny) but it did allow us to have practiced the movements involved in the moving long take, as well as help us visualize the way we would have to light the space.

One of the two of our talking head angles, as seen in our promo video.

And okay, listen, I’ll be the first to admit that the promo video shoot was not the greatest thing of all time: we went three hours over on the first day, many shots were cut or changed day of, a cigarette was lit indoors (and then properly extinguished), but most of these issues came down to us simply not having enough time to consider them before the shoot. In reality, the shots in which my producers and my camera team (the wonderful Sophia Lin and Isabel Salas) were able to sit down and discuss in depth, went incredibly smoothly. The second day, especially, which we planned way more to ensure we did not go over time as we did the first day, was one of the most efficient and relaxed days of filming I have experienced in a while. 

By the end of the entire process (and another week or so of hating editing so much) we had a completed promo video and to be honest, there is a lot I don’t like about it. Luckily, though, I understand why I don’t like what I don’t like. I understand that these kinds of mistakes happen when I don’t plan as much as I should and don’t coordinate between all of my departments to the level I should be. Recognizing these issues is the first step though and we have already made steps to ensure that this form of under planning does not happen again, which I will go into more in future posts.

While I did realize this negative thing, I also realized just how much great there was in this promo video. From beautiful planned shots to fun dialogue to beautiful unplanned shots, I began to see my vision not only blossom, but expand to share the creative decisions and personalities of the crew surrounding me. 

Some beautiful (but not yet color corrected) shots from the promo video.

Proud of the work, of the people who created it and of myself, I uploaded the promo video, proofread the rest of the Seed&Spark page and launched the site. COCAINE TO LONDON was now open to the public. You can view the promo video (with its color corrected footage) here!

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

Strawberry and Chocolate (1993): More Than a Quest for Sexual Awakening

Into a cramped, poorly lit motel room Communist college student David guides his girlfriend Vivian. So begins Strawberry and Chocolate directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío. “It’s like we’ve come here to do something wrong,” Vivian says as she looks around the room, the walls marred by cracks and peeling paint. David stands by the door, paralyzed. “We already discussed that.” He reminds her, anxious that his plan to lose his virginity might go awry. An innocent boy in search of sexual awakening, David must confront both the sociopolitical climate that prioritizes collective causes over personal desires and his own moral conflict. Whether it is the billboard of CDR (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution) across from the window or the hole on the wall exposing a woman next door having sex with a man, the motel room does not promise privacy for the private quest. And David is morally upright. When Vivian bursts out crying as she complains that David, like other men, wants only sex, he puts on his clothes to prove his love. “I won’t touch you until we’re married. And in a five-star hotel.” Thus, what follows is as much a quest for sexual awakening as it is a chance for David to introspect the world and himself.

Interestingly, this is just one of the film’s three beginnings. Following the title is Vivian’s marriage to an older, wealthier man intercut with the credits. The frustrated David stands with the crowd watching Vivian sign the marriage license; his promise comes to naught. His well-controlled life leads only to a failed quest for sexual awakening. Up to this point, the film strictly follows David's perspective, but a long tracking shot of Diego walking on the street with his friend German breaks the established point of view. German signals Diego to look at the disappointed David walking toward Coppelia, the ice cream parlor. David now becomes the prey, only that he is not so much to be exploited but to be rescued by this stranger.

Chocolate and Strawberry Ice Cream. Flickr, by Sabas Gonzalez (2019).

With the end of the credits comes the real beginning. Diego takes a seat across from David and puts down three items on the table: the strawberry ice cream, a bag of forbidden books, and some sunflowers. Respectively, they indicate that Diego differs from David in three fundamental ways. First, the strawberry flavor (feminine), as opposed to chocolate (masculine), indicates Diego’s homosexuality, a taboo in conservative Cuba. Second, he reads foreign works such as those of Mario Vargas Llosa instead of the books authorized by the government, politically aligning with the liberal values of the West. Moreover, he is religious when the government promotes atheism. The sunflowers are the offerings to the Virgin of Charity in his house. The unauthorized sexuality, coupled with the unapproved political and religious practices, characterizes Diego as a social outcast whom David, the good Communist, disdains. “Fly on the wings of imagination,” Diego suggests, as he invites David to his home to read forbidden works. However, David does not engage in the exchange until Diego mentions that he has some photos of David performing as Torvald in the school production of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House.” In the play, Torvald, a shallow, middle-class husband, represents a social product of late 19th-century Europe. Likewise, David is also a product of the Communist regime blindly following the revolution ideal. To retrieve the pictures, David visits Diego’s home, and the visit made possible only with the photos as a lure foreshadows David's transformation from a mere social product to a man of agency.

Sculpture of Our Lady of Charity. Wikimedia Commons, by Andreas Praefcke (2009).

When Diego unlocks the door, David confronts an entirely different world. From the shelves laden with books to the walls covered by pictures of celebrities, posters of popular culture, indigenous masks, and religious icons, the cluttered room shows a mixed-interest owner open to different ideas. “Welcome to my hideaway,” Diego says, David paralyzed at the door. The apartment offers an exclusive space for intellectual freedom that the restrictive society is no match for, standing in stark contrast to the empty motel room defined by both social and moral constraints. David, eyes widening, though self-conscious, examines the decor when Diego asks him to sit in the armchair where Diego often reads John Donne and Cavafy. David has no idea of the poets, and Diego laments, “How can a country move forward if its youth don’t know John Donne and Cavafy.” Not a revolutionary, Diego, however, cares about the country’s future as much as David does. Born a Cuban, Diego believes that he also has the right to contribute to his country, even though society does not accept him. 

Norvegiana, Henrik Ibsen. Flickr, by Øklands trykksaker - av Bergen Off. Bibliotek (2010).

Not necessarily in line with Diego’s progressive ideas, David gradually understands that different perspectives can co-exist just as the diverse decor in the house. When David’s friend accuses Diego, David defends Diego, asserting that Diego possesses principles. David forms his own judgment, not blindly adhering to the values established by the government and society. As the government blacklists Diego, forcing him to leave the country, Diego encourages his prostitute friend Nancy to develop a relationship with David, telling her that David is still a virgin. Before Diego leaves, he looks at the city landscape with David on a hill. David tells Diego about his first sexual experience. “You’ll never believe this. Nancy was my first woman.” Diego never reveals his plotting. “Impossible. Someone as attractive as you?” The joke conveys only bitterness of the unrequited love. And David and Nancy have sex in Diego’s bed! Diego’s indescribable agony nonetheless completes David’s sexual awakening arc. And it is not just about sex since Diego is now a man of his own thinking.

City of Havana Cuba. Flickr, by Cuatrok77 (2012).

 

 

Cocaine to London: The First Producer Meeting

On April 22nd, 2023, at 10:15 AM, I was still half-unconscious in bed, scrolling mindlessly through something probably not at all funny, when I received an email from Studio North. At this point, it had been a month since I submitted the application for the Studio North Film Grant. I knew results would come soon, but even then, my heart sank seeing the notification pop up. Over a year of work already put into this script, this moment felt like the first act turning point that the entire process had been building towards. Still to this day, I don’t think I’ve read the whole email. All I saw was the first word: Congratulations!

I took a minute (maybe an hour… okay, maybe a few days) to be excited, before I immediately channeled these emotions into something else: productivity. A fire had been lit underneath me and the struggle I knew was looming on the horizon could only be countered by one thing: planning. So in late April, early May, as classes were winding down, I got to work.

Part of the initial submission process involved me collecting a crew for my film, or at least the beginnings of one. While some of my crew and their roles would shift from April to now, two people would remain consistent and it would be amiss if I didn’t shout them out here: my wonderful producers Cierra Gladden and Kaori Taylor.

See, one thing I forgot to mention is while I did get very motivated from this grant victory, it also means I got very annoying. Not in a mean, awful way but in the ‘this-is-my-child’, ‘I’m so nervous’, passion kind of way. The result was me bothering my two producers pretty much every day and I am super grateful that they have put up with me up to this point and put me in my place when I needed it.

All that being said, a lot of my annoying behavior was, at least at its core, necessary. We were now in the thick of things. We had just started a 1000 piece puzzle and the first step we needed to take was laying out all the pieces on our coffee table and trying to visualize the full picture. Our first producer meeting occurred on May 19th, after many texts were sent between the three of us, (mainly me chaotically listing things we would eventually need to do). During this meeting, we began the process of eventually.

The first photo taken at our first CTL meeting! Featuring Cierra Gladden (front) and Kaori Taylor (back).

Of the things we would need to plan for, there were six major topics. The first, LOCATION, was the simplest of the six. I knew that most of the film would take place in the JHU-MICA Film Centre’s Recording Studio, which was extremely helpful both for access and for moving time. There were two other locations that were outside, but luckily both Kaori and Cierra are from Baltimore, so they were both very confident in their abilities to find locations that matched my vision. It was at this point that a big aspect of being a director came into play: the idea of delegating tasks. With these six things needing to be finished and all three of us being students, I didn’t want to overwork anybody. I also wanted to pick people who seemed the most excited or interested in tackling that specific topic. Kaori had a few ideas for the exterior location of the recording studio and she seemed interested in finding more, so I assigned her to location duty.

The next topic was ACTORS. It was at this point that I was very grateful to have Cierra on the team as she has been through this process, already having won the Studio North FIlm Grant last year. She directed me to Backstage, the site that Studio North grant films have been using to cast actors all for free. We took a minute to make an account and I was assigned to begin filling out the necessary requirements of the site to make our casting public. This involved the details of the shoot itself such as location, timeframe and reimbursements, but also the details of the characters themselves with things like descriptions, age ranges and sides (pieces of the script that actors can read for their audition). I would be the one in charge of this actor process for the most part, but it would start being split between me and Cierra for reasons I will get to in a later post.

The next two categories, BUDGET and SEED&SPARK, go hand in hand and they are the topics we explored the least about in this initial meeting, just because of how expansive they are. Compiling the budget is perhaps the most important topic we had to figure out and for that reason, we mainly just introduced its existence and waited until we had more details on things like production design costs, actor reimbursement prices and whether or not I won any other grants. In a couple of months, Cierra, who I assigned to budget, would make three different budget plans based on the amount of money we eventually make, which was incredibly helpful for giving other departments rough estimates in the future. As for Seed&Spark, it is a money-raising site made specifically for film and it is the site we would use to raise more money. We would spend this session making Seed&Spark accounts and beginning the extensive process of creating our film’s page, such as planning a bit of our promo video, filling out the logline of the film and beginning to make incentives people receive for contributing.

We also touched a bit into the idea of MARKETING, but similar to budget, we mainly just created our Instagram account and said we would discuss this later.

Our current timeline for the month of October!

This leads us into the final topic of discussion: THE TIMELINE. It was this that took the longest, as we now had to take everything we had spent the last hour and a half discussing and turn it into a plan. We would spend another hour color coding all of these different topics in our Google Calendar, defining the day we needed actors by, when we wanted to start doing camera meetings, when we wanted to launch Seed&Spark, etc. The result was our entire film… fully planned out. An 8 month long process, not even counting post-production. After our meeting, I would stare at this Google Calendar for a long time. Here it was… COCAINE TO LONDON. It had begun.

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

Mandragora (1997): An Innocent Boy in an Unforgiving World

In the mournful tunes of sustained notes, Wiktor Grodecki’s Mandragora begins with a long tracking shot of an average town before dawn. Under the violet-blue sky and a smattering of streetlights, a handful of run-down houses are barely distinguishable amidst the uneven twigs. A supposedly ordinary setting becomes an estranged view, a long-buried reality contrary to everything positive. Unsettling is not just the landscape, but the characters. Three boys run across an open field, their figures barely discernible from the darkness in the extreme long shot. And the camera does not track their path: as if an omniscient God well acquainted with human sinfulness, it knows its destination, passing the field and the crumbling stone houses, and resting at a shop window, ironically the brightest spot in the town. Through the window, twinkling lights and shimmering ornaments adorn Western clothing and shoes on display, with an image of the Manhattan skyline in the background, reminiscent of the holiday window displays on Fifth Avenue, an American dream that hardly fits into the town. Yet this grandeur is transient: a black shadow appears at the center of the frame, smashing the glass. The other boys quickly join, seizing whatever attracts them.

Manhattan Skyline Colors. Flickr, by Manu H (2008).

One of the boys is the 15-year-old protagonist, Marek, who with a one-way ticket to Prague, runs away from the small town, from the technical school, from his neglectful single father. Passing the barren grasslands, the train approaches the city. Marek, a tag still attached to the jacket he just steals, stares at the leaden sky. A close-up shot shows his attentive gaze at the foreign view—the organized buildings, the steel structures, the Vltava River—his lips slightly parted, reflecting the just realized freedom. Yet the next second, he frowns a bit, unprepared for the upcoming journey. An innocent boy versus a sinful world. His pursuit of freedom is destined to fail. On the first night, he loses all his money at the casinos and goes home with a pimp where he gets drugged and raped. From then on, only tragedy besets him. He becomes a male prostitute, abused by pimps, clients, and other prostitutes.

Perhaps what is miserable is the human inborn ability to swiftly dismantle the most uplifting. Finally saving some money with his prostitute best friend David, Marek dreams of buying a restaurant and traveling to Egypt. However, the more practical David decides to invest their shared money in the business of the exploitative pimp Sacha, who then introduces Marek to an English client. The man leads Marek to a splendid room with high ceilings and golden walls carved with intricate patterns. A collection of silver vessels is on display in a wood cabinet. “Make yourself at home,” the man says. But this is a high-end palace to be admired, not the world Marek is familiar with. Marek looks around the opulent house, plays with the CD rack, and from the table, carefully picks up a cigarette, only to come across an open photo album that shows genitals in tormented poses. Within the refined mask lies the darkness of the soul. The man brings out a candelabra. “We’ll make classic light for your classical body.” The meticulous pursuit of perfection and beauty tracing back to antiquity reduced to mere imitation in form, all those in between—the creativity, the revolutionary spirit, and more importantly, the reverence and love of the people and the world—denied.

Caravaggio Rest During the Flight From Egypt. Flickr, by Carulmare (2008).

“Chiaroscuro,” the man says. “Do you know Caravaggio?” Marek has no idea; the man is elated. “Sweet unconsciousness,” he says. When artists still imitated ancient sculptures, Caravaggio preferred the vulgar, modeling religious figures after street prostitutes, because the divinities were divine only if they understood human emotions. The man imagines himself as the great artist studying this innocent boy, lamenting how impossible it is to copy God’s proudest creation. But the man is not Caravaggio: he does not elevate Marek but reduces him to an object for his own pleasure. In his order, Marek takes off his clothes, stands on a rotating pedestal, and holds a sword, mimicking Donatello’s David. The man sits on the sofa, pours a drink, and expresses his appreciation of this live sculpture in front. The scene cuts between the excited man and the baffled Marek, with the camera moving toward the man as he slowly reaches orgasm while pulling away from Marek. Clearly, the man sees Marek exclusively as an object of sexual interest with no interiority. And Marek bears no resemblance to David who after defeating Goliath becomes a hero well-loved by the people. Disempowered, Marek turns into a mere victim of this consuming gaze which with almost no physical contact, already subverts the sanctity of beauty, courage, art, and the human body created in the image of God.

Donatellos David in the Bargello Museum. Flickr, by Peter Visser (2009).

In the end, Marek overdoses in a stall in the train station where his journey begins, hallucinating worms crawling on his body and slitting his leg with a knife. His father, after searching for his son in vain, also arrives at the station to take the train home. In the toilet, the camera slowly rises up, once again transforming into an all-knowing God. The father walks in, leans against the stall partition, and smokes, not knowing that his son is now free and pure as the blood drains. In this unforgiving world, only the omniscient camera indicates a sense of redemption, uniting the remorseful father and the anguished son. After all, he is just an innocent boy looking for freedom, if only the world could treat him kindly.

Cocaine to London: A Pre-Production Mindset

Nine months after my initial first draft park session, I found myself at 11:55 at night, poorly-postured in the atrium of Gilman Hall. I was fervently typing, filling in the last information I needed to submit to the Studio North Film Grant. Months and months of work all leading to this moment. Stressed and sweaty, I melodramatically raised my finger high above the enter key, looked around to give the overdone cliche its proper pacing… not yet… and then brought my finger down. Before that, though… how did I get here?

A copy of the COCAINE TO LONDON draft submitted to the Studio North Film Grant.

The process to apply was expansive and multi-phased, however all extraneous material revolved around one thing: the script. For the rest of the summer I spent time working on that initial draft. I had already accepted that, in the short time before the application was due, I could not perfect it. So instead of nitpicking the story, I focused on one major aspect of this application process: logistics.

See, the application is judged in terms of two different categories: the effectiveness, creativity and success of the script, but also the feasibility of actually turning it into a film on a small budget. And currently my script was about fifteen pages too long, had about four or five too many characters and involved a literal POLICE CHASE. After a few weeks of lying to myself that this was shootable (“maybe they have some police cars for rent on Travelocity”) I finally accepted that making the script feasible would not be an easy feat. I had to rehash almost everything.

This time though, in order to avoid this same issue, I went into this rewriting process with a new mindset. While it was very cathartic to sit down for eight hours and write a nothing-off-the-table draft, I realized I needed to acknowledge and consider the logistical side of film as I wrote. So, when I sat down to write the new draft, it was not at some park. It was at my desk where I had full access to the internet and could Google any information I needed. It did not take eight hours like the first one, but multiple days as not only was I just writing, but experiencing my first taste of pre-production.

And looking back on it, many of the decisions and realizations I made at this moment have stuck all the way until now. For example, this is the moment where I recognized that I simply had too many locations for how much I wanted to do with this script. I recognized this from doing some research on normal setup times for the camera I wanted to use (an ARRI AMIRA) as well as asking some past grant film winners how long it took them to move locations when they did. In order to accommodate for these high times, I decided I would make the script something of a bottle film with most, if not all, of it taking place in a recording studio. Through some more research, I found that the JHU-MICA Film Centre has a recording studio in its building, which meant my crew would not even have to move location at all since all equipment would be in the Film Centre to begin with. This was the first major breakthrough in terms of logistics and while it did mean that I would have to force my script into the confines of one location, I strangely did not feel at all restrained. In fact, I felt rejuvenated. As someone who has never dealt with the producer side of film, and was very skeptical if they would enjoy it or not, it was very surprising how rewarding this moment felt.

The JHU-MICA Film Centre Recording Studio where COCAINE TO LONDON will take place.

From that moment on, I had a strange desire to work on the producer elements of this pre-production phase and I found myself moving away from the script and onto the Pitch Packet, the other major element of this application. A Pitch Packet is a large document that includes nearly all aspects of your project from a summary of the story and its characters, to the way you plan to shoot it and even a preliminary budget sheet. Surprisingly, these next few weeks were some of the most fun I had during this entire pre-grant process.

I found the production process was much less rigid than I anticipated and actually involved a lot of thinking on the fly and finding clever solutions around things. I found myself researching everything from restaurants that offered the most coupons and how to obtain them to how to properly time a shot and make a shooting schedule to prop and production design research. I truly felt connected to the script in a way I hadn’t before. It felt like the fleshing out of a character. My script was no longer just its story, but a living, breathing organism.

While this did make me more invested in the project, it also made me realize just how much work and stress it would take. This early production phase was not all perfect. As I began researching more and more I realized just how much I would have to juggle from making shots to casting to budget, etc. Worst of all, though, I realized just how much money I would need. The grant would only give $2,000, a figure that because of my plan of an 8 day shoot, would barely cover the cost of on-set food. I would need to do a lot more fundraising, a lot more promotion and even then probably have to make budget cuts. I realized this film would not be a walk in the park and while it worried me for a moment, the emotions then turned to excitement. I realized I was ready and at that moment I decided… this film would be made. I’d make sure of it.

 

So as 11:59 hit, I finished my email, read it over once, thought back to my preparation and this promise I made to myself… and hit the enter button. Then, I actually clicked send with my mouse because I remembered the enter button doesn’t send an email. Whoops.

 

Until next time…

                        Devin