HopkinsCinemAddicts

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

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

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

Sundown: Evening (Day Five)

After the roughest day in production, we had another break day. As always, I reflected on what happened the previous day and found silver linings. The day wasn’t all bad; the morning scene was successful, which featured Johns Hopkins’ own Dr. Jamie Young as our “psychiatrist” character. Furthermore, I was determined not to let one bad day of shooting ruin my energy for the rest of the shoot. I was especially excited for our final days as we planned to shoot all the scenes that were part of the original shorter script. The scenes that started it all.

The break was primarily used to take photos of my actors for “family photo” production design in the final location of the shoot, the main character’s childhood home. Here, I also got to talk more with my main actors and understand how they truly felt about the project—they were having a good time! Taking a relaxed moment to connect with my actors was vital for me and them to understand each other better, director to actor, and person to person. After the break day and a few conversations with my cast and crew, my attitude toward the remaining portion of the shoot improved. In my reflections, I understood (and continue to understand) that my mistakes and regrets about the film were lessons to learn from going forward.

Our final location was held at my paternal grandmother’s Baltimore apartment. She graciously let us invade her space for nearly twelve hours at a time, four days straight. The first day was focused on shooting the very first scene in the film, the opening conversation between the main character and his mother. Watching everything come together—the production design, the performance—I felt that my original artistic vision was genuinely coming to fruition. Later that night, we wrapped on one of my main actors. Directing him (and others) was a great push outside my comfort zone in working with non-student actors and adapting to various acting experience levels. Most importantly, my experience taught me many lessons in how to do what a good director does best: know what they want and how to get it.

Aug. 24 - “Young Mikey” and his mother

We began our fifth shooting day a bit later to get closer to the time of day we needed. We primarily focused on external shots that day, prompting us to move quickly with the ever-changing light. This day brought an obvious issue to my attention; the period my entire film centers around (sunset, or more aptly, sundown) lasts for a very short time. There was confusion on my part about what the lighting conditions would be at certain times and how long those conditions would last. As a result, we had to postpone filming one scene for over an hour since the reflection of the light outside at the story-accurate time of day was too strong. My Script Supervisor, Devin Andrada, was not happy with me regarding the continuity; but again, these are lessons learned for the future. Despite the issues, this shot was where my crew (specifically my camera and lighting team!) got to show off their skills with the setup and execution. Also, while waiting to shoot this scene, we got the quintessential sundown shot (not really, it was pre-sundown, early evening, but close enough).

Aug. 25 - Crew setting up for the window shot

The most exciting part of the day was starting work with my “Creature” actor for our one-shot scene. Here, the main character’s mother gets caught by the Creature, which we wanted to be able to execute creatively through a one-shot. Going through the prep for this was a challenge: clearing space for movement, blocking, framing, sound, and more. However, with each dry run and each take, the work began to pay off. We did about four or five runs of this scene, each with unique elements that could work well in the final film. This was our last shot of the night, which ended with us squealing over a take that worked, a shared success amongst the entire crew. More than any day before, I felt what I had been working to feel throughout the previous shoot days: a genuine sense of accomplishment that was validated by others’ enthusiasm.

Aug. 26 - Checking the front door, featuring my Sound Mixer, NIls

This sense of accomplishment carried me into the second-to-last day of production. The entire day was dedicated to the scene where the main character first encounters the Creature. The scene that started it all. We were staring down the barrel of an 8-hour day without much time for breaks; if we weren’t shooting, we were rehearsing, setting up for the next shot, or breaking down the previous one. I expected to be more stressed this day than on any of the others. I had anticipated it for so long. However, I felt more level-headed that day than I had felt on all the other days. I loved moving from shot to shot, setup to setup, as seamlessly as we did. The day ended with another one-shot where the main character meets the Creature for the first time. After 8 hours of work, the most significant part of our film was complete. I returned home well past midnight but felt more accomplished than ever. After three months of intense preparation and six days of shooting later, 80% of my short film was under my belt.

By this time, there was just one day left in our schedule. Approaching the end of production after an entire summer’s worth of work and anticipation was a bittersweet denouement. While I was eager to stop harboring self-doubts, finally get some rest, and generally move on, I also knew I would miss this experience for everything that it was. Sundown was coming to an end, and it was almost time for us to say goodbye.

Sundown: Morning (Day One)

When I awoke on the first morning of production, time felt unreal. It was a Friday, but it felt like a Monday. Day One. The beginning of what I had worked so hard to pull together over the past three months. I stayed up late to ensure everything was in order—printing scripts, shooting schedules, call sheets, everything. Soon, it was time for action.

Aug. 19: Late-night printing scripts. V4 with edits.

On day one, our call time was 9:00am at the Film Centre. Once I arrived, I met with my other leading actor (the adult version of my first actor), convened with my crew, and set prep into motion. Watching everything come together—camera setup, production design, hair and makeup, last-minute rehearsals—I was moving through my disbelief that something I had worked on tirelessly was coming to life. Meeting my actors was the biggest example of this; I loved finally connecting with my cast in person, going over lines, and feeling the energy they would bring their characters. I was not as nervous as I thought I would be stepping into the director role. I had my worries, sure, but I felt a natural ease in addressing everyone on set and commanding attention (in a non-intimidating way), mainly because I was given space to do so by my cast and crew. They trusted me, which was all I could ask for.

Back to reality—we needed to shoot! We began the day about 30 minutes behind schedule after arriving a bit late, so we worked quickly to set up a “therapist office” in the faculty and staff kitchen area. Once it was “all systems go,” pressing the record button, once to roll, once more to cut, was a transition past the point of no return—the first take, evidence that the film now existed in some way. Of course, I was then super particular about redoing the shot multiple times to make it “perfect” (whatever that meant). Already behind schedule, I was encouraged by my crew (particularly my Assistant Director, Mia DeAngelo) to move on, so we did. This scene, which exists about halfway through the film, had many elements: dialogue, multiple angles of said dialogue, lighting challenges, and more. It was the perfect way to test set dynamics and my directing style for the rest of the production.

Aug. 19: Our first scene in the “therapist office.”

After filming this scene, we had a much-needed lunch break while moving locations to shoot the last scene of the day and the movie’s final scene. This scene posed some challenges, considering how crucial it was to look and feel right. Even after messing around with lighting setup, character action, and camera framing, I’m not sure that the scene ended up where it needed to be. The instance of this feeling was, I soon learned, the first of many. Nonetheless, we wrapped in the early evening, saying goodbye to our supporting actress and moving equipment to our following shooting location before dispersing to our homes for the evening. The first night back set a dangerous precedent for production: wake up around 8am, go to set for no less than 8 hours, come home to work on production documents, and attempt sleep at 2am. This was my night, every night, without fail.

On day two, we were at my Assistant Camera’s house to shoot with my main actor at his “adult apartment.” We got to have fun shooting “nighttime” scenes in broad daylight, dirtying up a bedroom, and hiding our sound mixer in the shower for a bathroom scene. I originally planned to be in the space for two days, but I figured we could achieve everything in one very long day. However, we ran over schedule. I had to decide whether to keep people past wrap time for an hour or more or make sacrifices. Ultimately, I cut a relatively insignificant scene from the film, allowing us to finish on time.

Aug. 20: Day two, location two; bathroom of “adult apartment.”

With the extra day in our schedule, I held a production meeting with my crew to discuss plans for one of the most crucial scenes in the film: the climax, Scene 20. How painfully ironic that the climax of my film was the height of my experience on set-- for all the wrong reasons. First and foremost, this was the busiest day on set. Nearly all my cast and crew were present, totaling about 21 people on set throughout the day reporting to me. Second, this scene essentially functions as a set piece, requiring a lot of blocking and equipment prep beforehand. Even after 2 hours of rehearsal and my crew put in their best efforts to creatively light and shoot the scene, I came away from it feeling utterly defeated. I felt a painful shame as most of my cast and crew watched me fail to extract the performance I wanted. The imposter syndrome I had worked hard to stave off in the middle of the summer rushed back in the worst way.

Aug. 21: A camera/dolly blocking diagram for Scene 20.

Half of the film had been shot at this point, and I was disappointed with the most significant part of it. This was the culmination of my biggest failure in approaching Sundown: inadequate preparation. Even then, I’m not convinced that the failure wasn’t due in part to an unclear story, reflecting deeper insecurities about my project. Returning home, I felt a greater shame as I returned to my destructive routine of finalizing production documents the night before we shot. I spiraled into an identity crisis, ending my night seriously reevaluating my future in the film industry. This was my lowest point during production. However, I had no choice but to continue. As long as my cast and crew still trusted me to direct, I knew I had the support I needed to see the project through thick and thin. It was all I needed.

The Lighthouse, The VVitch, and the Wardrobe

Minor spoilers for The Witch and The Lighthouse

I watched Robert Egger’s film The Witch (The VVitch) a few weeks ago (I’ve been kicking myself since 2015 to rent it off Amazon, but then it popped up on Netflix) and dear lord what an amazing film.

So then I obviously went and rented Egger’s most recent film The Lighthouse, and honestly I’m not sure which one is better. They’re both so disturbing, so absorbing, so big, so boring (in a good way), so weirdly secretive, so silly for how serious they are.

I want to talk about one really stand-out aspect present in both films (and I know I’m not the first to point this out): the score and sound design in The Witch and The Lighthouse are incredible. All thanks goes to composer Mark Korven (both films) and sound designer Damian Volpe (The Lighthouse) for building so much suspense through a few key sound effects and two really crafty scores. There’s a few things that work so, so well: the jarring way in which the music shifts from whispering to screaming, the constant repetition of certain eerie sounds, and the combination of specific audio and imagery to create such uncomfortable atmospheres.

The Witch is limp without its music. The film is beautiful, but most of the emotion in the film is heard rather than seen. When the eponymous witch first appears on screen, we only see her back. She’s bent over a table, working at something, and even though we can’t see what she’s doing, WE KNOW what she’s doing (horror warning: it involves a baby and hammer). But the image is so dark (the film’s nighttime scenes were shot mostly using candlelight and moonlight) that you can barely make out anything beyond a suggestion of the events. What gets you is the music: a playfully hostile drumbeat paired with what sounds like a hacksaw carving through a block of wood. It’s the soundtrack of anxiety, the musical equivalent of passing a 14-wheeler on a two lane highway. It asks you to start biting your nails. Later in the film, we meet a very evil certain somebody who only speaks in whispers—whose dialogue sounds so physical that you can hear their tongue hitting their teeth as they pronounce the letter ‘t’. It sounds like someone is literally whispering in your ear. It’s unnerving. And the music isn’t afraid to build up to uncomfortable loudness for the sake of atmosphere. A lot of modern horror movies are incredibly lazy in the way they use loudness; when they want to make you jump in your seat, they let everything get really quiet and then they slap you across the face with a blaring sound cue. The Witch isn’t interested in wasting tension. It pulls you to the edge of your seat because it wants to drag you further into the film.

The Lighthouse does some really interesting things with sound (a reoccurring mermaid shrieks at the camera in such an unearthly, washed out way; the squawking of seagulls started to drive me up the wall). But one of the best parts of the whole film (next to Pattinson and Dafoe’s performances) is the constant blaring foghorn that sounds off every five minutes throughout the duration of the film. It’s such an otherworldly, bassy sound—you can’t really tell if it’s something you might actually hear coming from a lighthouse in the 1890’s, or if it’s a completely made up science-fiction noise. But it hits so well because the one sound says so much: its repetition makes you think of horror/insanity, the fact that it’s a foghorn makes you think of the ocean, and the singularity of it connotes isolation. Beyond that, it just sounds really, really cool.

Go watch The Lighthouse and The Witch.

Red and Revenge in Oldboy and Lady Vengeance (Nita)

Park Chan-wook is one of the leading voices of the Korean New Wave of Cinema, a movement that began in 1997 and gave rise to a variety of daring and creative masterpieces. Park is best known for directing a series of three films known as The Vengeance Trilogy. The trio of films are narratively unconnected; however, as the name suggests, the three films are linked by the common theme of violent revenge.

My personal favorites of the trilogy are the second and third installments, Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005), respectively. Oldboy, one of the most influential Asian films of the 2000s, focuses on male protagonist Oh Dae-su’s quest to find out why his unknown captor imprisoned him for 15 years. Similarly, Lady Vengeance follows Lee Geum-ja, a woman who is blackmailed into serving 13 years in prison for a murder she did not commit. Upon her release from prison, Geum-ja embarks on a journey for revenge against the true murderer. The two films are visually and psychologically dreadful, yet Park skillfully explores beautiful complexities about human nature by showcasing violence on the mind and body. One of the ways in which Park achieves these layered films is by his distinct usage of color palette, in particular the color red.

Oldboy features frequent pops of red that contrast the general dark and muted color palette of the film. These moments of red often appear in the form of blood, highlighting the physical violence within the film. At the start of Oldboy, this violence is self-inflicted: while imprisoned in the bleak hotel room, Dae-su repeatedly shatters glass and tries to kill himself (he is revived by his captor every time against his will). A shot of Dae-su being dragged out of the hotel, bloodied and unconscious, is shown multiple times. A large trail of blood is left behind on each occasion, and the red-stained carpet is visible in following scenes. Dae-su’s violence against himself reveals his desire to escape the dark and cyclical life he is imprisoned in, while his inability to “succeed” in his attempts furthers the film’s concept of inescapable fate – the lingering dark red blood stains serving as a reminder of this hopeless condition. This is violence on the mind, too.

As the film continues, this violence is projected outwards when Dae-su’s desire for revenge ensues. For instance, in the scene where Dae-su finds and captures one of his captor’s accomplices, Dae-su is graphically seen ripping out the man’s teeth and causing profuse bleeding. The mutilation of another human’s body and the consequent explosions of red – a common occurrence in the movie – reveal mankind’s capacity for depravity.

In Lady Vengeance, a similar usage of the color red can be observed. Like Oldboy, Lady Vengeance features the protagonist causing self-harm in the beginning of the film. Sporting red eyeshadow and overwhelmed with guilt, Geum-ja visits the parents of the boy she falsely confessed to murdering. In an attempt to earn their forgiveness, she threatens to cut off all her fingers. Before she is stopped by the terrified parents, she manages to chop off her little finger. In the visually brutal scene, blood is spewed out all over a coffee table and the floor. Park’s signature overhead shot reveals the red pools of blood surrounding the three crazed characters, highlighting the internal and external violence of the scene.

One of the most notable scenes in Lady Vengeance occurs towards the end of the film, after Geum-ja captures the real murderer and finds out that he has killed other children. Geum-ja gathers all the parents of the murdered children and they decide to seek revenge and take turns torturing the murderer, rather than simply turning him into the police. The scenes of violence that follow this decision are incredibly eerie and graphic, with blood being a pervasive element in most shots. The scenes are purposefully outrageous, as Park explores the concept of ordinary people being able to commit such heinous acts. While the parents display their capacity for savagery in the name of revenge, the sequence prompts us to consider the complex themes of justice and equality. Furthermore, we wonder about the inherent darkness that Park suggests humanity possesses.

After repeatedly emphasizing the extreme violence on characters’ bodies and minds resulting from revenge seeking, Park ultimately conveys that the violence culminates into nothing substantially beneficial. In Oldboy, the end reveals that the revenge was two-way, as Dae-su finds out that his captor only freed him to seek revenge and manipulate Dae-su into unknowingly falling in love with his own daughter. The last scene is Dae-su and his daughter/lover, dressed in all red, embracing in a field of white snow. Here, the red serves as an aggressive reminder of the moral dilemma that Dae-su is left with. In Lady Vengeance, the end depicts the drive for revenge spreading from one woman to many individuals. Though the final act of revenge is successfully carried out and celebrated by the characters at the end of the film, Geum-ja’s guilt still remains as she must live with the repercussions of her actions. Interestingly, there is an absence of red in the final shot of Lady Vengeance, hinting at the film’s departure from violence and revenge. Instead, a feeling of emptiness permeates the scene as an incredibly pained Geum-ja stands in a narrow alley of white snow, with her face pathetically stuffed in a white cake. Thus, Park seems to end on a similar sentiment at the conclusion of both Oldboy and Lady Vengeance: revenge is unsatisfying.

Beyond the Image: The Surrealistic Works of Luis Buñuel (Mireille)

Surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel laments that the relationship between an audience and a text changes constantly, leading to individual interpretation of the artwork that often strays from the artist’s original intent. Buñuel argues that the audience should instead just accept the images in films without imposition of meaning or the passing of judgement. In other words, the real “duty” of the audience should be to simply “allow” what is being portrayed. Despite his assertions, Buñuel’s own surrealistic films are difficult to approach in this manner due to his stylistic choices, which are often shocking and unsettling. Woven throughout Buñuel’s work, which varies from abstract, almost nonsensical to more concrete, plot driven dramas, there are recurring themes such as the fragmentation and sexualization of body parts and the opinioned portrayal of certain sectors of society; precisely intended to jar the audience. Two films by Buñuel, L’Âge D’Or (1930) and The Exterminating Angel (1967), are emblematic of Buñuel’s style and as such his agenda of providing the audience with provocative fodder that defies interpretation and begs the audience to allow the purely visual experience.  

L’Âge D’Or is a surrealistic film in which Buñuel depicts the human primitive desperation to fulfill sexual desire even as social norms attempt to repress them. As such, the film is also a criticism, if not an outright attack on Bourgeois society. In this film, despite Buñuel’s argument for the “acceptance” of the image at hand, there are several sequences in which the use of shocking imagery taunts the audience to pass judgement and take sides. Buñuel chooses to highlight the sexual nature of humanity and puts sexual activity front and center from the introduction of the film. For example, a “couple” in the film is depicted as intertwined and wrestling in the mud while attending a religious ceremony. Buñuel shows them engaging in almost animalistic behaviors and completely oblivious that others are privy to their activity. In another instance, the same “couple” has been separated from the others attending the religious ceremony, and Buñuel cuts to a medium shot of the woman in a bathroom followed by a jump cut to what is seemingly volcanic rock, but strongly resembles feces. This filmic moment is quite possibly a nod to the Freudian influences of the time that argued that human beings are born with instinctual libido. However, this sequence also takes place in the fragment of the film that is introduced as “The Founding of Imperial Rome”, a not too subtle suggestion of what Buñuel thinks of society’s attempts to squelch the irrepressible desires of man and woman. Clearly, L’Âge D’Or does not provide the viewer with material that can be absorbed with impassivity. Rather, the film asserts the psychological and philosophical ideologies of the time while blatantly unveiling torrid human tendencies.

The Exterminating Angel also uses filmic juxtapositions to examine visual “obsessions” and repeated themes, but this time through a more linear narrative. In this film, Buñuel confounds the temporality of the film; blurring the lines between current reality and the dream state. Buñuel, constantly yet subtly, juxtaposes the images being viewed with the reaction of the characters as they observe the image of the reality at hand. He accomplishes this feat by alternating between high and low key lighting, switching between highly illuminated scenes and moments in which the characters are cloaked in shadow, rendering visible only certain features of their persona. The shots with high key lighting typically depict the periods in the film that are more “grounded” in reality. For example, Buñuel uses high key lighting when showing the group of protagonists imprisoned in a household for no rational reason going about their business and activities in a manner that an audience would accept as “normal”. However, Buñuel switches to low key lighting to underscore the dream-like almost psychotic state of some of the characters that are unable to leave the mansion. By using low key lighting, Buñuel is able to create more contrast and additional shadows to conceal portions of the frame, thus confounding and “un-grounding” the characters from their body and the setting, while also creating a feeling of dissociation for the audience. Buñuel’s use of cinematic lighting in this film is vastly different from L’Âge D’Or, which almost exclusively utilizes natural lighting; but both films are successful in their ability to separate and blend the current reality with a subconscious or dream state.

Finally, towards the culmination of The Exterminating Angel, the characters begin to laugh even when one of the couples has slit their wrists and died in a closet while engaging in a sexual act. This use of contrasting sound, namely a sound typically associated with joy, is combined with death and creates a lingering feeling of dissociation that displaces the viewer from a “normal” reality, not unlike the intimate scenes in L’Âge D’Or. This feeling of disquietude is no less strong even if one argues that rather than simply to create juxtaposition, Buñuel chose laughter in this scene to underscore that the characters are reaching a breaking point in their sanity as a result of the physical and psychological constraint within the household. In either case, Buñuel creates the very juxtaposition that he tries to avoid. In other words, he presents to the viewer too many possible venues to explore, which actually interfere with the ability to just let the images flood over the audience and work their magic.

Restrictive and Privileged Cameras (Charlotte)

Film audiences are accustomed to particular cinematographic conventions. Audiences expect to be given a certain type of privileged vantage point—one that shows them not too much and not too little. They don’t expect things happening within the diegesis of the film to be hidden from them. But, in that same vein, they don’t expect to be shown any more than is necessary. Both The White Ribbon (2009, dir. Michael Heneke) and Blue is the Warmest Color (2013, dir. Abdellatif Kechiche) break with these conventions in especially effective and affecting ways, and it is because of the way these filmmakers refuse to conform to cinematographic conventions that these films are so successful.

The White Ribbon is a haunting film. Set in a feudal German village just prior to World War I, the film follows the adults and children alike as a series of cruel acts unfold without explanation. It is disturbing, but not in the way that a horror movie is disturbing. The disturbing nature of the film arises in large part not from what it shows its audience, but from what it fails to show.

The scene that illustrates this idea best occurs early on in the film. The pastor’s two oldest children, Klara and Martin, did not return home until very late at night, and the pastor decides to beat them as punishment. The scene begins in a cramped hallway. The pastor’s wife, Anna, calls Klara and she descends the stairs. She stops on a landing, above her mother and brother, and the frame cuts her in half. We cannot see the expression on her face nor can we see any kind of silent interaction she has with either of the other two characters. In fact, throughout the opening scene we barely see the characters’ faces, and if we do they are in profile or somehow obscured in part. They barely speak, and so the audience has very limited access to their internal thoughts and feelings. The most significant gesture we see is Anna’s lingering hand on her son’s back. A benefit of this stripped-down, withholding camera is that every piece of information we are given, because we are given so little, is imbued with meaning. By depriving his audience, Heneke makes us hyper-vigilant. The camera pans down the hallway and the three characters walk single-file toward the dining room’s door. We watch from our same spot as they walk away—again, we do not see faces, only the backs of heads. Throughout the scene, the camera hardly ever moves from its spot, it just pivots. It is as though Heneke has made the viewer herself a character in the scene, standing and turning her head to follow the action, but rooted to the spot, unable to move. The three characters disappear behind the door, and the camera remains in the hall. Because viewers are so accustomed to being shown everything, it seems unnatural to not follow the characters in. Martin comes back into the hallway, head down, and the camera from its limited vantage point follows him as he retrieves a switch from another room. He then returns to the dining room and we are once again left staring at a closed door. We can, however, hear him being beaten through the door. The film revolves around a community that is so repressed and secretive. So much goes on behind closed doors, in this case literally, and the camerawork reflects that. The passivity of the camera also gives the viewer a sense of helplessness. We are just standing there, hearing all this unfold from the hallway. The camera is not fully engaged with the scene in the way that we expect it to be, and that distance reflects the distant complicity of every other member of this community throughout the film.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Blue is the Warmest Color, a film following the affair between a young girl and an older female art student. It is affecting because it shows its audience absolutely everything. One scene that illustrates this occurs after the protagonist, Adele, breaks up with the boyfriend she has early on. She returns to her room and breaks down crying. She strips off her scarf and jacket and the camera follows her as she collapses on her bed. We see her in this moment of extreme vulnerability and emotionality in a very intimate space, her own bedroom and her own bed. The viewer is given access to every piece of her private life. Kechiche immediately takes us to an extreme close-up of Adele’s face—and it is worth noting that a disproportionate percentage of the film is composed of extreme close-ups of Adele’s face. It is as though Kechiche is trying to climb inside her head. In the same way that Breathless can be said to be a study of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s face, so too can Blue be said to be a study of Adele’s. Kechiche stays in that close-up for an uncomfortable amount of time, so long that a viewer might want to look away. Adele does not look pretty in this moment, and part way through she picks up a candy bar and takes a bite, chewing with her mouth open. It is a raw, ugly study of a painful moment in this character’s story. It is almost too intimate, and feels invasive. The way Kechiche uses his camera ties into the overall themes because it is a revelatory film—it depicts a love story rarely seen on film, and it is, in many ways, about Adele’s journey to come out. The film seeks to dig into this intimate, private affair and give its viewers access that they otherwise would never have. It is trying to get into the heads of these women, and Adele in particular, and it does so by looking at her face.

In conclusion, these two films serve their overall themes by breaking cinematographic conventions in opposite ways. In taking these risks, their directors have created effective and affecting films.

John Hughes and the "Silent" Scene (Charlotte)

John Hughes is widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of the 1980s and arguably of the 20^th century. He was one of the first filmmakers to honestly depict the experiences of adolescents and really make them feel seen, understood, and reflected. He is well known for his dialogue, but the real power of his films lies in scenes with no dialogue at all.

Two of his most well-known works, The Breakfast Club (1985) and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), contain expressionistic scenes completely devoid of dialogue that do a great deal of heavy lifting for their respective films: the dance scene in The Breakfast Club and the museum scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. They both use strong imagery and actor physicality to get at the heart of what these movies are about.

The dance scene in The Breakfast Club comes toward the end of the film, immediately after all five characters have engaged in a long and emotionally intimate conversation about how they ended up in detention. During that conversation, the characters sit still throughout, and the camera remains static. These characters who all began the morning as strangers have let each other in. They have been vulnerable with each other emotionally. The following dance scene is a physical, visual expression of that emotional release and that emotional intimacy.

It can even be read as a metaphor for the trajectory of the group’s dynamic. At the start of the scene, the characters are all separate, isolated from one another and on various hierarchical planes that seem to correspond with their social statuses. Brian begins in the A/V booth, isolated and most connected to the school. Claire and Andrew dance up in the mezzanine, the highest up in the bunch. Allison dances across the floor while Bender sits, head banging, on a statue in the center of the library (a statue he most certainly should not be climbing), a rebel that has more street cred than Brian and Allison, but not as much as Claire and Andrew.

For almost all of first several cuts, each character is seen alone in the frame. But, quickly, the characters seem to fight against the constraints of their separate frames. Brian dances in the doorframe—a liminal space, a crucial border—that separates him from the group. He crosses it and, metaphorically, crosses the social lines dividing him from the rest of the group.

There are several shots of people’s dancing feet. Their feet seem to stomp at the edges of the frame, willing it to widen. Also, the frame which used to contain the entirety of these character’s bodies now can only contain their feet—the frame is too small. And, although all their shoes are different, they are united in dance, a form of human connection and communication so ancient, so physical, and so foundational that it can transcend these artificial borders set up to divide them.

These shots are intercut with medium shots of the characters. Once again, the frame is too small to contain their entire bodies. One particular shot of Allison shows her face and hair swinging in and out of view, literally not contained within the frame.

Finally, we see the characters dancing together. First, Allison and Bender, the two lowest on the metaphorical totem pole, followed by the three boys, and then the two girls. The moment between the two girls is significant in that they represent the top and bottom of the social hierarchy and yet, in this moment, they are equals.

The final shot of the sequence shows Allison engaging in a flailing, wild dance that ends with her crumpled on the floor, exhausted. This moment has been a release for these characters, a release from their social bonds and expectations, a cleaving together of them on a deeply human and physical level. The music backing the scene says it all: We Are Not Alone.

The museum scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off functions similarly within a distinctly different narrative. In this case, the scene represents a revelatory release, but involves a splitting apart rather than a cleaving together. Ferris, his girlfriend Sloane, and his best friend Cameron have cut class and taken off for Chicago. Throughout the day, Ferris and Sloane are carefree, but Cameron is riddled with anxiety. His outlook on the world is different from theirs, and, more than any of the other characters this moment seems pivotal in his understanding of himself.

The scene also seems to mirror the process of their coming of age—appropriate given that graduation is looming for all these characters. They start by infiltrating an elementary school’s field trip, a kind of regress back into childhood, with, of course, Ferris leading Cameron, the two divided by Sloane. Then we see Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, a painting depicting one man on his own, representing Cameron, along with a couple, Ferris and Sloane. Another noteworthy painting is Mary Cassatt’s The Child’s Bath, in which a mother lovingly bathes her child. This again represents childhood and dependency upon parents.

We see several abstract paintings followed by a striking, head-on shot of Rodin’s Portrait of Balzac, a statue with crossed arms. Then we have a reverse shot of the three characters mirroring the statue’s pose back to it. This kind of imitation represents the start of adolescence, the point at which all one does is mimic “grown-up” behavior. The characters seem to be arranged hierarchically, with Ferris at the front, followed by Sloane and then Cameron. Sloane again divides the two.

We then immediately get a shot of the three of them lined up, this time with Ferris in the middle, mirroring three abstract, late career Picassos. All three depict people, but fragmented, scattered people. This represents the adolescent period of self-discovery and confusion, a period that might not ever fully end.

Then, we see Cameron on his own before A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, a pointillist piece. He looks into the face of a young girl, the only figure facing out toward the viewer from the piece. Several shots of the young girl’s face are cut together, each one progressively tighter in until the face is unrecognizable as a face. Cameron’s expression is fearful, confused, and revelatory. He seems to be looking in a mirror, seeing himself disappear. After this scene Cameron is never the same. He seems almost comatose for a while and then his attitude completely changes. He realizes that he cannot live his life in fear—of his father or of anyone.

Intercut with this scene is a shot of Ferris and Sloane kissing in front of panes of stained glass, a church-like piece. They seem to be engaged in a pseudo-marriage. They seem to be leaving Cameron behind.

Both of these scenes are the crown jewels of their respective movies. They capture the essence of their films without saying a word (quite literally). They are unexpected, expressionistic, and truly artful. They follow the emotional arcs of these movies and we get to watch the dynamics between these characters play out physically. They touch the viewer emotionally in a way that simply cannot be done with words.

Mr. Robot and The Governance of Consumerism (Katie)

Mr. Robot, a critically acclaimed drama thriller television series authored by Sam Esmail, focuses on the lonely and troubled Elliot Alderson. Elliot is introduced to us as an eccentric cybersecurity engineer, and he becomes an enigmatic vigilante hacker as time goes on, one whose motives are unclear even to us. To complement its labyrinthine narrative, Mr. Robot has a distinct visual style which reinforces the isolation and oppression every character faces, and this artistic approach will be the main focus of my discussion. (However, there is no need to fear for spoilers—I will only be analyzing the first episode of the series.)

Within the show, one of the main antagonizing forces is society itself; Esmail demonstrates how consumerist culture can drive people apart from one another, especially in Elliot’s case.

Consider the following exchange from Mr. Robot’s pilot, "eps1.0_hellofriend.mov,” in which Elliot delivers a fervent speech on the evils of our modern world to his therapist:

                                 KRISTA
What is is about society that disappoints you so much?

                                 ELLIOT
Oh, I don’t know. Is it that we collectively thought that Steve Jobs was a great man, even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it’s that it feels like all of our heroes are counterfeit. The world itself's just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our burning commentary bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy.  Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money. I’m not saying anything new. We all know why we do this. Not because Hunger Games books makes us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it’s painful not to pretend, because we’re cowards. Fuck society.

                                 KRISTA (O.S.)
                               (echoing)
Elliot.
                                 (beat)
Elliot. You’re not saying anything. What’s wrong?

                                 ELLIOT
                         (smiling slightly)
Nothing.

(0:12:15 - 0:13:26, formatting and emphases mine.)

In this exchange, Elliot’s estrangement from those he should communicate honestly with is already made clear, and his anger is directed explicitly towards society. Throughout the scene, Krista and Elliot are practically never in the same frame. The only time we see them together is in an establishing shot, one which pits Krista and Elliot on opposite sides of the office, with Elliot’s completely black outfit contrasting heavily with the cream-colored sofa and curtains. However, his outfit is only one aspect which makes Elliot seem out of place. The rest of the time, the two are always in their own close-ups, making both characters seem as visually in their separate headspaces as they are mentally—this being coupled with disorienting cuts to different close-up angles of their faces.

Elliot’s frequent voiceover of his thoughts over this scene only further cement his distance from his therapist, and his monologue on society’s evils is intercut with real-life footage of factory workers, fallen celebrities, and social media feeds. Elliot is not tied down to the visuals of his therapist’s office—that is, not tied down to Krista. It can be said that everything we see and hear about Elliot in the first fifteen minutes of the series has to do with his pained and total aloneness.

Esmail continues to showcase his startling visuals throughout the episode. Later on, when the company Elliot’s cybersecurity firm protects, E-Corp, visits Elliot’s workplace for a briefing on a recent hack, our protagonist meets Tyrell Wellick. Tyrell is a pivotal character later in the season, and the way he is introduced is rife with importance. Our first clear visual of Tyrell places him in a low depth of field close-up, his visage in the far right quarter of the frame as the rest of the shot hovers out of focus. To be clear, when I write “far right quarter,” I mean it:

Elliot’s reaction shot to Tyrell is not unlike this one.

(The actual shots themselves were not included due to copyright reasons.)

Elliot and Tyrell are opposing forces. Both of them occupy spaces in which they are as far as possible from one another, showing their mutual isolation in the world they will eventually unite to combat against. However, even their aforementioned eventual unity is hinted at in these shots. Every background figure and object is out of focus, and Elliot and Tyrell can only clearly see one another. They are destined for a special bond, even if they are both first totally alone when they are introduced to one another. Their future is also foreshadowed in their dialogue; when Elliot’s mental voiceover starts to think an incredulous sentence about Tyrell, Tyrell finishes it for him in open speech. This unites their identities for a single moment. Incidentally, Tyrell finishing Elliot’s sentence also leads to them being in the same frame together for just a second, before extremely distanced close-ups take over once more. (This style of framing is so common in Mr. Robot that Saturday Night Live (SNL) has even remarked on it in a parody of Mr. Robot.)

Esmail’s decisions to frame characters in these ways can be seen in other interactions and scenes of the first episode—as well as for the rest of the series. So far, we have discussed how these visuals portray characters in relation to each other, but Esmail also portrays characters in relation to bodiless presences or omnipresent forces in the world. One of the most telling displays of an abstract force becoming a menacing presence in relation to Elliot comes at the end of the pilot episode.

Elliot is going through a triumphant moment. He strides through Times Square—the setting of Mr. Robot being New York City—as something he has worked for finally comes to fruition. (A spoiler coming for the end of the first episode, now.) A huge first step in his grand plan as an official vigilante hacker is completed when Terry Colby, the CEO of an all-powerful corporation suspected of committing inhumane crimes for profit, is arrested due to Elliot’s hacking.

When we see Times Square with Elliot, nearly every building with a screen is reporting the news, and beneath the gargantuan, towering skyscrapers, Elliot walks into the center of the frame. He changes from being a small figure at the side of the screen into being the dominant visual in its center. The camera even slides into a low-angle position. A huge screen takes up the majority of the background behind Elliot, and the screen displays a news report on Colby’s arrest. It looks like Elliot is in control, and he is, both in the narrative and in the frame.

Elliot slowly pulls down his hood, turns his face up to the light of the screens, and looks around. But there is a subtle shift in the visuals. As he turns, the camera cuts to a different shot of Times Square. Elliot is now level with the camera, and the glaring ads of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola cut off Elliot at both sides of the frame. We can see now that it was only due to our perspective that every building appeared to be broadcasting the news of Colby’s arrest. Even the wide, massive screen that had taken up the majority of the last shot—the screen that reported Elliot’s victory—has become dwarfed by the innumerable amount of advertisements still present in Times Square. Now that the crowd of tourists and city folk is visible, we can see that all of them are indifferent to Elliot’s heroic act.

As the final insult to injury, the camera returns to the first shot of Times Square, where Elliot is seen from a low-angle camera and beneath the enormous screen that reports on Colby’s arrest. That is the shot where he was in control. Elliot throws up his hands and smiles in the genuine joy… and finds out that he has no control at all. Not in the frame, and not in the narrative, because ominous men in black approach the blissful Elliot from behind and threaten him into getting into their car. As this happens, the camera also cuts back to being level with Elliot; this is the Elliot that is bombarded by advertisements. The camera even breaks the 180-degree rule as the men in black accost him, cutting between different men in black circling him, and Elliot has no choice but to comply with his white-collar captors. This disorienting sequence shows how Elliot, even when believing himself to have power, actually has none when combating the force of society.

It is almost as if no act of justice can stop the force of consumerism, the slave-driver that is capitalism; it is almost as if no amount of saving the people from corporate greed will save them from themselves. Elliot tries to be a hero, and he is punished for it. But those are stories for the rest of Mr. Robot to tackle, especially with the neurotic and complicated Elliot as its protagonist. If not for the compelling, twisting, and achingly incisive narrative, one could very easily watch the show simply for its beautiful and dynamic shots, which tell stories and explain relationships without a single spoken word.

 

Works cited in this text:

“eps1.0_hellofriend.mov.” Mr. Robot. USA Network. June 24, 2015. Amazon Prime; Television.

What Do You Do When You Finish Filming? (Ceci)

That’s a wrap! Filming has officially concluded. To say that a weight was lifted off my shoulders is an understatement. Everything was finally over. It was time to rest easy. We’re done!

Well. Not exactly. We’re almost done.

A film isn’t over after shooting wraps. It seems kind of counter-intuitive, but there’s a lot of work that needs to get done after filming ends. The bulk of this? Editing.

Editing is an entirely different skill than filming. Directors, creative agencies, corporations, and organizations all hire editors to oversee videos, movies, shorts, and other creative content. I worked in editing over the summer and learned how to use specific editing software programs such as Premiere and After Effects. There’s a whole new world that lies in editing, and it’s an integral part to finishing a film.

(See above a screengrab from the editing process. Mireille has been doing an awesome job with color grading!)

In simplest forms, there’s two major aspects in editing: the picture and the sound. Mireille is overseeing the picture cut, which is an enormous undertaking. But sound?  Sound requires a unique specialization. When the sound in a film is good, you don’t notice it. On the flip side, when the sound in the film is bad, it’s the only thing you notice.  Knowing this, I wanted someone who knew sound well to help me with my project. I asked around to see if any professors could recommend someone to me. After searching around, I got put in touch with a sound engineer from MICA who will be overseeing the audio aspects of the project.

After the sound editing is over, the film will be completely done. That means we’re done! Well. Not exactly. We’re almost done. Okay, okay, what could I possibly need to do now?

After all of the editing is done, I’m going to want my film to be seen. After all, that’s the point of a film: to be seen. This means, film festivals! Applying to film festivals provides a great opportunity to get your work shown, see other projects, network, and make connections for future projects. Most importantly, it’s a great way to enter into a community of creators and get feedback on your work. It’s equal parts exciting and nerve-wracking, which is perhaps a great reflection on how this entire process has been.    

(Pictured above, the poster for the film)

After applying to film festivals, we’re done! Well. Not exactly. I’m kidding. This is actually the end! No tricks this time.

Seeing everything come together in these finals stages has been an incredible and rewarding journey. I am so proud of what I have done and am so grateful for the hard work and dedication of everyone involved. A warm thank you to everyone who’s helped or supported me. Film is truly a collaborative process and I wouldn’t be here without all the help I received from others.

And for the last time… cut! That’s a wrap on Unawakened.

As a post note, if you're interested in checking out the trailer, it's available at this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NuHSLKAEeZLUVHheWK4C2gEWuw6yMoAD/view?usp=sharing

What You Do For Filming (Ceci)

I spent my weekend in the depths of a frat basement.

When planning for this project, I front-loaded a lot of the heavy lifting so that I had time for re-shoots. Luckily, none were needed, so for the second weekend there were only three scenes, totaling two pages. In filmic language: it was going to be an easy couple of days. However, I had left some challenges, namely, shooting in a bar.

(A shot taken from the first, successful (!!), weekend of shooting)

Bars, unfortunately, want you to pay them to use their space.  I called around to see if we could get in somewhere for free and offer screen credit, and was rejected by what felt like every establishment in Baltimore. It makes sense that they would want to be paid, but, unfortunately for me, it was too much for our budget. I sat down with Mireille to try to figure out what to do.

She grimaced and then said, “can we shoot it in a frat?”

I’ll admit, I wasn’t fond of the idea, but we didn’t have any better ones. I started contacting some of my friends in fraternities to see if I could use their basement for free. Success! The boys were going to let me convert their basement into a movie set for the morning. Wonderful news! Not so wonderful – converting the space into looking like a bar and not a frat.

Where to start? Cleaning. To my production assistants (hereby, PAs) – have I mentioned how much I appreciate you cleaning the frat for me? If I haven’t: thank you so, so, so, much. PAs have a rough job on set. They basically have to do whatever needs to get done and the work isn’t glamorous. I remember being a PA and having to run around and do laundry, get food, wrangle actors together, and the works. And, unfortunately, on my set, this meant the PAs had to gather beer cans off of the floor. Thanks guys!

PAs are incredibly important to a set and often underappreciated. They keep things running smoothly by doing the small tasks the rest of us don’t have time to do. I had wonderful PAs on set with me. They didn’t complain. They did their jobs. And we wrapped a couple of hours early. Seriously, that’s a big deal. So thank you PAs! Your presence has been noted and appreciated.

I’m not sure that I have any insightful lessons for the week, or any tips to carry home. However, I will say that filming takes dedication, it takes rearranging plans, and it takes some creativity. I never would have expected to be filming in a frat basement, but you make things work. In the end, it all looked great. So, thank you boys, for letting me use your basement. And thank you PAs, for converting the basement into a shootable location! That’s something we can all raise a glass of beer and toast to.

Life on Set (Ceci)

Unawakened is the first project that I have ever directed. Although I’m a first-time film director, I’ve been on several sets, both professional and student, and I’ve learned and grown with each one. Each one has a different environment and different way of operating, and each one is useful in different ways. On each set I learned a little more about what it meant to take on my role – whether it be a production assistant, a boom-operator, or a casting director. This set wasn’t any different. It may seem weird that you learn how to be a director when you are a director, but there’s really no other way. You often don’t know what something is like until you do it, and directing was no different. As much as I had prepared and anticipated the day that was to come, I still had no idea what I was getting myself in to.

(Seeing my name on the slate was thrilling - and made everything feel so much more real)

The first day on set was terrifying. I didn’t sleep well the night before. I was worried that my actors weren’t going to show up, that my crew wouldn’t show up, that I would be missing equipment, something would break, that all the footage would be lost - essentially that the set would fall apart under my watch. None of this happened. Thankfully. Nevertheless, the possibility of it happening kept me up at night. But even though I was terrified out of my mind, I was equal parts excited as well. This was my project, my vision, that was coming to life. And everyone on set was here to make it happen. It was given an incredible opportunity and it turned into an incredible experience.

That didn’t make the first few moments on set any less terrifying. The crew started to file in and my nerves and jitters started to wear away little by little. The actors started to file in about an hour in after that. I took a few deep breathes. I could do this, I just needed to find my footing. By the third take, I had started to find that footing. I started to get into the groove of calling “Action!” and “Cut!” at their appropriate times (there are some takes that have an awkward amount of time after the scene has ended because I forgot I had to say “Cut!” for the camera to stop rolling). But overall, I became more confident in what I was doing, and I was ready to lead this crew. After all, if I didn’t, no one else was. Talk about a pressure-free job.

(A fraction of the equipment that was stored in my apartment)

Despite it being a turbulent pre-production process, the filming process itself went quite smoothly. We finished filming early every day, and there were no major mishaps. The true testament of the weekend, though, would come when we played back the footage. There were a few tricky shots that were filmed. The most complicated? A forced super-imposed shot in which we had to time up two distinct shots. This meant: the camera couldn’t move. The lighting couldn’t change. And the actors had to time their dialogue so that the two scenes, when played over one another, lined up.

The stakes were high. We wouldn’t know if this fancy trick of a camera worked until we played back the footage. If the timing was wrong, we would have to re-film the same scene that had taken two hours to set up and film. My cameraman and DPs took the footage and played it back in Premiere, Adobe’s non-linear editing system. I waited, patiently, to see if I got the go ahead from DPs – that we could move on and that the shot had worked. I busied myself with other things – there’s always something to do on a film set. A few minutes later, Mireille walked over to me.

“It’s going to work.”

I sighed a big sigh of relief. The timing worked. The footage looked great. Everything had gone smoothly. With one weekend tackled and one to go, I felt good about where we were.

A State of Emergency (Ceci)

In my last post, I stated that the law of physics states that everything that can go wrong the week before a shoot, will go wrong. I was right, but not because I wanted to be. If I thought missing props were bad, it didn’t compare to the 44 hours beforehand.

44 hours before we were set to shoot, I got an email from my lead actress:

“This email is in regards to the Unawakened short film…. I will no longer be able to be apart of the film. I’m so so sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.”

My entire body froze. I took a shallow, panicked, breath. What could I do? What should I do? I wanted to scream. I did scream. My thoughts raced. I sat on the ground and cried for a brief moment. But I didn’t have time to wallow in self-despair. Not when I had film to film in 43 hours. I picked myself up. It was time to make a decision. The clock was ticking. I called my DPs.

“We have an emergency.”

The next twelve hours that ensued were complete and utter chaos. Out of respect for the schedule of my cast and crew, I set a 24 hour limit to figure out whether we were going to shoot that weekend or postpone the entire project. I weighed the pros and cons of both options for several hours.

Pros of delaying the shoot:

1. I’d have more time to sort this problem out
2. I could recast more thoroughly

Cons of delaying the shoot:

1. Locations have been set
2. Crew has been determined and scheduled
3. Talent (barring the lead) has been contacted and scheduled (the lead male coming from out of state)

There are a lot of moving parts that come together for a shoot, and they take a ton of planning to get them all to operate as one machine. As I started to talk through pushing the schedule back even just one week, the parts started to fall to the wayside. I would lose crew – most importantly one of my DPs. Locations would have to be re-determined. Casting and scheduling would have to be completely reorganized. I had to shoot this weekend.

I determined that I had to shoot this weekend, even though I wasn’t quite sure how that would work out. I started by going back through the people who had been interested in the project on Backstage and then started reaching out to groups within the Hopkins community.

“Hi, my name is Ceci. Due to an emergency I have to recast the lead role for my senior thesis and I think you’d be a great fit for the role. Can I talk to you about your availability for the upcoming weekends …” the cold calls started.

After three hours of sending emails, posting notices, and calling people, a text message popped up from one of my friends. “My friend reached out to me saying she was interested in your project. I think she’s a good fit. Can I give her your number?” Half an hour later I was on the phone with her. The next morning I met her for coffee.

I sat with her and explained the premise and the commitment. “Does that all sound good to you?” It wasn’t until she nodded and agreed that my whole body relaxed and I let out a sigh of relief.

I smiled. We had figured it out. The shoot would go on.

A Hectic Mess: The Final Days Before the Shoot (Ceci)

The week before shooting is, quite possibly, the most chaotic and trying span of time a director may ever undergo. It is Tuesday as I type this, four days before I start shooting, although you won’t be able to read this until after I have started (wish me luck! And for it not to rain during the scenes I have to shoot outside. The latter more important than the former).

If you had the unfortunate experience of encountering me during this time period, you probably saw me looking disheveled, lacking sleep, and probably holding an unreasonably large coffee cup in my hand (if you saw me after 2 pm, it was most definitely my second cup). If you sent me an email or a text message and you weren’t someone on the cast or crew, there’s a high chance I didn’t respond to you. Please accept my apologies. I promise I will return them.

(Pictured above is a photo of my sturdy reusable coffee cup. It has helped me through many hard times. This photo was taken at 4:30, so it is my second cup.)

There are a thousand and one things that need to be finalized before shooting can commence, and the laws of physics (as a film major, trust my expertise on this) state that absolutely everything that has been planned has to unravel within the 100 hours before shooting. My nice shooting schedule has had locations placed with “TBD????” and half the props I ordered are either not here or incorrect - see: police badge below that I ordered that came with no badge and only the clip.

On top of everything that needs to get done, there’s a much more personal anxiety: can I do this? As a director, I’m the one that people go to with questions. I’m the one that keeps the boat afloat. I’m the one that’s leading this. Although film is collaborative, this project is a reflection of me and my work, and I do very much take responsibility of its outcome – good or bad. The fear of things not working out in the way that I had planned or hoped weighs around me much stronger than any logistical fears. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday when I was a freshman and a production assistant on my first set. I don’t feel completely different from that young woman. How much have I really changed? It feels like not at all. It’s that fear that’s more immediate and pertinent: the fear that I’m not qualified enough to pull this off and it will all come crumbling down around me. As much as it may seem irrational, it’s not until you’re in the eye of the storm and navigating the boat that you truly let go of this and focus on making it through. In the week before shooting, you're not in the center. You're awaiting the impending damages, and trying to calculate exactly what to do to minimize them.  

People only really tend to notice big changes, and that’s probably why I don’t feel much different from the girl I was when I started college. Each semester I’ve become a slightly more capable, slightly more qualified person to tackle this. Each small change eventually led to a larger change, but it didn’t happen overnight and certainly did not happen without hours of training and shadowing and observing. And I’m still learning and still growing. At 21, I’ve not yet learned everything I could possibly know about film production, who knew! Yet I’m very different from the woman I was a few years ago, even if I sometimes feel as nervous as she would. But I’m removed enough that I’ve been trusted to do this. And I know I'm ready to tackle the storm. 

The Camera in Film: Active Persona or Passive Observer? (Mireille)

What is it about the filmic apparatus that entices us? And what is the camera’s role in the depiction of a reality that often spawns from a single mind, but then is manipulated by many? In some films the camera simply is an observer of the action, but in others it seems to have its own personal agenda. For example, in Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) the camera takes on the persona of both tool and protagonist. In contrast, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) the camera distances itself from the chaos that surrounds it and simply observes. Whether the camera should be a potent machine that conceives images that should always alter the reality it tries to capture, or if it is simply “just capturing” what is occurring on the other side, it is, nevertheless, the job of the film to transport us into the reality created by its auteur.

French film theorist Jean-Louis Baudry argues that with respect to film, the camera as an apparatus and instrument actually produces specific ideological effects. Baudry suggests that since film is simply a series of still images that have minute differences, the projection of these images during a movie creates a whole new experience, an epiphenomenon of sorts, which the still images alone are incapable of producing without the machine. This idea is consistent with Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov’s approach, which he called “cine-eye” (kino pravda). Vertov believed that the camera is able to capture information beyond what the human eye can. Rather than using the camera to attempt to mimic reality, Vertov’s “cine-eye” creates a new perception that the audience would not be privy to without the aid of the apparatus. In his Man with a Movie Camera, Vertov intentionally manipulates the film such that the camera and what it is capable of portraying, rather than the story, is the most important and relevant feature of the film.

The camera is surrealistically large, and Vertov creates a superimposition in which he, as the camera operator, is shown standing on top of the camera. In this way, Vertov exaggerates the supernatural ability of the camera to capture much more than what is simply observable. Although in his film Vertov depicts common city life and the banal activities that unfold within it, he pays particular attention to geometry and composition such that every element in the mise-en-scène of a particular shot contributes to the unworldly feel of the film. For example, in the portrayal of laborers working in a mine/factory, Vertov uses high contrast lighting to show the workers completely cloaked in black shadows and almost “swallowed” by the harsh and darkened horizontal and vertical lines that compose the frame. Then, Vertov cuts to a shot where the audience can see someone with an actual camera filming the scenario, and at this point, the faces of the workers and details of the scene become obvious. In this way, Vertov shows us that the camera can capture events that are occurring in a given reality, but also that the camera itself has individualism and power that render it capable of manipulating reality and creating a “new dimension” in the film.

In contrast, Hitchcock prefers that the camera simply observe. One could argue that this is virtually impossible due to the effect of auteurism, which consciously or subconsciously impacts the making of a film even if only minimally. However, in Rear Window, Hitchcock attempts simply to “unmask” the reality that is taking place in front of the camera. Normally, this type of camera use is mainly reserved for documentary films; however, in the case of Rear Window Hitchcock intends to convey that the camera is removed from the action and need not interfere with what is occurring between the characters.

Throughout Rear Window, Hitchcock utilizes static extreme long and wide shots, resting on the action for lengthy takes at a time. The characters present in the film also never truly leave their filmic space, and are “captured” only when the camera “comes” to their location and does not interfere or follow any other action that may be happening when off camera. Additionally, Hitchcock utilizes geometry to emphasize the separation of the characters in the film, allowing the audience to peer into the individual realities without any heavy handed direction or influence from other characters or even the director. Slow and smooth pans between the windows of the apartment complex in which the film takes place create a voyeuristic perspective not only for the main character Jeff, in fact the camera is primarily present in his apartment, but also for the spectator. Hitchcock’s use of geometry also limits what the spectator can see, and as a result, influences the viewing experience of the audience. This begs the question of whether the camera is simply capturing the drama that occurs in the secluded apartment complex as an impartial observer or if there is some inevitable auteurism behind the lens.

Though it may not be the job of the audience to understand completely how images in a film are created or what the camera’s intentions are in a particular film, the fascination behind the “magic” that a camera can capture often has the power to push an audience’s perceptions and awareness. This power comes from an amalgamation of technology, technique, and auteurism. Whether or not, and how much, a camera influences the reality it tries to capture is a matter of opinion. However, it is less a matter of opinion that every film has the potential to influence other films, other art forms, and even personal lives.

 

Bresson's L'argent: A New Form of Passion (Jin)

When watching films, we are so often told exactly how to feel through the orchestral score and close-ups of waving hands and facial expressions, that we scarcely have space to perceive the characters’ emotions for ourselves. Bresson, in L’argent, creates this space for his audience in the form of distancing; we are no longer relayed the characters’ exact internal dialogue, nor are we obliged to witness any form of direct emotional outburst. Instead, there is a palpable distance between us and the film, bestowing us with the responsibility of interpreting the characters’ feelings through their actions. It is a retreat into the action of observation, a retreat away from theatricality and clichéd emotional symbols, and it is this retreat that allows L’argent to become an even keener portrayal of human passion.

On the surface, L’argent poses a relatively simple story. Yvon, a working-class man with a wife and young daughter, is wrongfully accused of producing counterfeit cash when he unknowingly uses counterfeit cash to pay his restaurant tab. He is exempt from jail time but loses his job, prompting him to agree in assisting a bank heist. When he is again caught, he is sentenced to prison, leading to a chain of increasingly tragic events. Yvon’s suffering is particularly tragic, because all his grievances can be traced back to the foolishness of two teenage boys, who decided to pay at a photo shop using a forged 500-franc note.

 

Because of the narrative simplicity and Bresson’s use of impassive dialogue and faces, it is easy to mistake the film for being emotionally detached. The actors themselves show incredible restraint, and Bresson’s use of perfect framing and very precise composition give a calculative impression. Both are particularly evident during the scene in which Elise discovers her husband, Yvon, is in jail. Given their scant living conditions and dependent child, we expect Yvon’s wife to feel a great degree of loss and display a look of shock or, at the least, a few sobs of grief. Instead, we are shown her sitting on a plain wooden bench, with her hands demurely folded on her lap and her face quietly bowed. Even when Yvon is sentenced to three years in prison, the only reaction shot that we see of Elise is of her similarly sitting on a bench at court, framed by the stark empty benches around her.

Within this short sequence, Elise’s emotional turmoil, deprived of any dialogue and accompanied only by diegetic sound, is thereby bound within her actions. It is this passive, silent action of sitting, followed only by the simple action of rising to leave the court room, that speaks louder than any verbalized language of grief. This is perhaps because we are invited to discover her emotion through her actions, much like the way we are obliged to do so in real life. Our intimate experiences of others’ intense traumas are never wholly spelt out for us via explanatory narration nor melancholy strings playing in the background. Rather, we are left to piece together their internal despair by quietly observing their actions and interpreting them as emotional symbols. Similarly, when watching Elise sitting down, we experience her grief the same way we experience others’ grievances in reality, constrained to using our imagination to fill in for absent information. Bresson gives us the space to discover her despair for ourselves, and her despair, then, becomes real to us.  

This personalized discovery of emotion is used throughout the entire film, creating an even stronger connection between the audience and the story. When Yvon murders the entire household towards the end of the film, we are informed of the murder through the actions of the dog, as the camera pans along his frenzied movement, up and down, past the corpses. By using the dog as an agent of information, we are given the chance to “discover” the murder, rather than being forthright informed of it, further allowing us to actively participate in the film’s emotional environment.

This discovery-type experience is also paired with an omission of the actual moment of violence. Bresson purposefully cuts straight from the building of tension to the consequences of the act of violence that the preceding shots had been building towards. For example, when Yvon attempts suicide, we see him hiding a mound of pills behind his prison bed before the film cuts immediately to an ambulance pulling away. Later, when Yvon murders the hotel keepers, we are again spared the details of the actual murder and see, instead, blood swirling down a bathroom sink. By sparing us these moments of climax, Bresson also spares us the risk of finding such moments unbelievable. Furthermore, the omissions isolate human action so that we become aware of their limitations: one simple scene of an ambulance driving away is forced to contain the full emotional significance of Yvon’s attempted suicide, just as the Elise’s mute sitting must contain her whole despair. Instead of limiting our emotional experience of the film, these tightly contained expressions heighten the film’s emotional impact. After all, the most difficult form of grief is one in which we are left to our imagination, forced to re-create scenes of death which we’ve never witnessed nor were fully informed of, compelled to guess the exact details as to how a loved one may have perished.

Redefining the First-Person Perspective in Film (Jin)

Film calls for a new definition of the first-person perspective. In literature, it is easier to define; the words are arranged so that they mimic the running verbal narratives in our head, and the first-person perspective can therefore be defined as our internal narrator whose role is to identify the visual world via names and labels. Using this internal narration, we attempt to contain and identify our world within one language, our verbal language. However, film carries an ability to transcend from this verbal language into the visual one, thereby also transcending from an absorption of a simple verbal narrative to the experience of a sensory narrative. Therefore, when creating a film in the first-person perspective, we arrive at the question: how does one experience the world?  

The most common way of describing one’s perception of the world is through the consciousness of time. We are, in fact, so conscious of time that it has become a given. We automatically assume that we live in the present by building on the past, looking into the future, and so forth, as though our existence can be carefully partitioned into “the before,” “the now,” and “the later.” When examining the way in which our memories are stored, however, the division of time is not at all central to our stream of consciousness. We do not store our memories as though looking back on certain events from time to time, via some mental filing system. Instead, our perception of the now is wholly interwoven with the past, to the point in which the two are inseparable. We may give labels to our memories (“these are from the far past,” “these are from the recent past”), but our memories, regardless of when they were created, are still inherently in the present.

Therefore, when creating a narrative that is entirely from an internalized perspective of one character, it would not make much sense to have a linear progression of time and a singular building of events. Rather, the narrative becomes a mix of the perception of the present moment via sight and hearing, and the memories that are inherently linked, brought forth by sensory stimuli. Furthermore, the coherence of the plot becomes less significant than the creation of a system of logic specific to the simulated world. It is just as how, when we think, our own thoughts may make perfect sense to us while being entirely nonsensical to others; each of us creates an isolated, internalized system of logic through which we individually interpret our world. Similarly, a film narrative can be created so that, when logically pried apart, the plot may not make much sense, but the viewers, in the moment of viewing it, can make sense of it, because they experiencing from the protagonist’s perspective.

A first-person film could thereby be defined as a combination of this internalized system of logic with the visceral processing of the present, and ultimately, the visual and audial expression of this combination as a cinematic experience. Most films, whether or not attempting to create this first-person perspective, only succeed in accomplishing one of the two components. They can therefore be separated into two categories: films that sustain themselves on an internalized system of logic and films that mimic our visceral processing of the world.

Alma & Elisabet in Bergman's Persona

Bergman’s Persona is an example of a film suspended within the very specific system of logic created by two protagonists, Elisabet and Alma. Elisabet, the mentally ill patient and actress, is under the care of Alma, a nurse, and their two personalities begin to fuse in a series of surreal interactions. These interactions are expressed via specific instants in which the two characters’ physical and mental realities overlap: Alma takes the place of Elisabet when suddenly shown making love to Elisabet’s husband, and Alma’s and Elisabet’s bodies seem to meld when standing side by side or their ghostly faces overlaid over each other. The film is not driven by a chronological progression of events but by an extreme psychological violence expressed within a very systematic exchange of emotional energy. One cannot describe the characters’ twisting relationship as logically comprehensible, but they form their own logic through an association of images: of Elisabet drawing away from Alma in fear, of Alma breathing across the neck of Elisabet who is asleep and subdued, of the two women constantly exchanging roles of the dominant and submissive. The viewers cannot escape from this visual logic that suspends the two characters, and the extent to which the film is imbued with their psychotic internal presence is near suffocating.

The second category of first-person film, the film which mimic our visceral processing, is best observable in experimental films like those of Stan Brakhage. Brakhage most heavily relies on the metaphor of the “untutored eye,” his idea of seeing the world primarily through pure perception. He employs flashing images, repetitive movements, and an intent focus on singular details such as swirling leaves or a swaying cat’s paw to evoke a sensory experience. By isolating physical elements within a tightly woven rhythm of cuts, he awakens a new consciousness of our physical reality without turning it into an incomprehensible abstract. The trembling close-ups of human flesh, the reoccurrence of blurred lights and wavering reflections, are not dense symbols but keen details of the real; they provoke an awareness rather than an obtuse contemplation of what is symbolic. Each of these details are innately tied to a certain sensory feeling, whether it be taste, touch, or sight, and each elicits our own memories that echo such sensations. Brakhage leaves room for us to perceive our own world via his, and his films are like visualized memories inviting us to accept them as our own. 

If Bergman's and Brakhage's works represent two forms of a first-person film, what would it mean to combine the two styles to make one whole? Could one successfully create a film that both sustains the viewers in an internalized system of logic, while also mimicking the sensual perception of the physical world? For us, this reconciliation of two parts is innate; our perception of the present moment and our self-sustained logical interpretation of it are the only true constituents of our consciousness. To have these two parts simultaneously work together within a film would be to create a pure first-person experience and to truly grant the film a real human consciousness.  

Sleight of Hand or Hallucination? Magical Realism in Film (Mireille)

Magical realism. The genre in which the real, the natural, and the fantastical are intertwined. But what truly defines it? Take for example Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017), the most recent example of a rather more mainstream magic realism film. In this film, Del Toro plays on the theme of “Beauty and the Beast”. However, in his version, the “beauty” is desirable, but also mute, and the “beast” is an immortal alien creature with supernatural powers, and not a transfigured handsome prince. Though they do fall in love, and “beauty” does save the beast, the beast ultimately also saves the beauty by resurrecting her from the dead. Thus, Del Toro’s magic is established by making possible true romantic love between two different species and also by defying death.

However, Del Toro’s approach is not one that can be applied to all films that address magical realism. Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s films that can be categorized under the same genre often take the opposite approach. Rather than relying on the creation of something fantastical, Iñárritu relies on blurring the premise for reality, and shakes up the audience’s ability to determine what is real and what is not. For example, in his film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), the audience is never really sure if the main character Riggan Thomson, an actor who used to play the role of a super hero, actually possesses supernatural powers or is simply delusional. Iñárritu’s use of cinematography cleverly confounds the boundaries between what is actually happening and what may only be happening in the mind of Thomson. For instance, a scene is cut to create the impression that objects are breaking through telekinesis. In another scene, the audience is privy to a bird’s eye view of the cityscape as if Riggan were flying, but they never actually see Riggan in the sky. As a result, the film in its entirety has a surrealistic feel that nudges us into believing that the impossible may actually be possible. The ending of Birdman actually puts that question to the audience directly when Riggan’s daughter searches for her father by looking out of a window and into the sky and then starts smiling as if she has found him. The film cuts to black there, so we never really know, though the thought that Riggan is flying out there gnaws at us like a real possibility.

Another one of Iñárritu’s films that touches upon some of the same ideologies is Biutiful (2010). The film begins with a dreamscape sequence that features Uxbal, the main character. The sequence has almost no sound, and the ethereal quality of the filming creates a sharp demarcation between it and the rest of the film. The story is a view into the life of Uxbal, who is a working class man. In contrast to the peaceful opening scene, Uxbal’s life is noisy, difficult, dirty, and complicated. However, this film is also, and I would argue mostly, about death due to Uxbal being slowly killed by a terminal disease. The magic that Iñárritu injects into this film has to do with the mystical uncertainties of death and the process of dying. Throughout the film Iñárritu flashes images of death that are unexpected or implausible. In one scene, dead bodies are clinging to the ceilings of a building. In another those same dead bodies are now washed up on a shore, like beached whales. Uxbal also has a "gift" that allows him to hear what the dead have to say so the families can accept the death of their loved one. The audience views all these scenes without having the certainty that anyone other than Uxbal is also witnessing them. Iñárritu reiterates the feeling of uncertainty in more banal scenes as well such as when Uxbal’s brother and ex-wife Marambra are engaged in intimate activity and the camera is angled above them without showing Marambra’s face. The viewers are suddenly startled with the appearance of crimson liquid spilling from what seems like Marambra’s body. In the next cut, however, it becomes clear that it is spilled wine and not spilled blood. Iñárritu uses “sleight of hand” techniques such as this one to make the audience jittery about what is really taking place and what is being imagined in our mind, and perhaps also in Uxbal’s mind.

In sum, throughout all of Biutiful there is no clear cut boundary between what is real and what may be a manifestation of our imagination. In my opinion this blurring of reality creates an even more potent magic realism film than one in which fictitious, fantastical creatures are made up to create the magic. 

 

Bong Joon-ho: Balancing Politics and Cinema (Faith)

When Bong Joon-ho’s Okja premiered at Cannes this year, it was quickly surrounded with controversy. The news circulating was less about the film itself, however, and more about Netflix’s role as a producer. While the future of streaming services in the world of film is an legitimate debate, I was more interested in Okja for its content—specifically, how it would compare to Bong’s previous film, Snowpiercer (2013). Both films take place in the near future, feature ensemble casts, and tackle similar themes, from capitalism to environmentalism. Based on these similarities, I expected Bong’s eccentric and artistic style to convey these themes with equal strength in both films. After watching Okja, however, I realized that this ability to weave politics into cinema was a careful and tenuous balance, one which wasn’t struck properly in Bong’s newest film. When I asked myself what about Snowpiercer enables it to explore some of the same political themes as Okja without feeling incoherent and sanctimonious, the titular setting stood out to me as a possible answer.

Snowpiercer takes place in a post-apocalyptic future, where the last survivors of humanity withstand a new Ice Age in the confines of a train (called the Snowpiercer) where rigid hierarchy separates citizens into different train cars. The train travels immense distances during the film, but its nature as an entirely closed system keeps the characters tightly packed together. This physical immediacy effectively streamlines the social structure within the film world (car passengers increase in social status as one moves toward the engine) as well as the physical action and goals (the tail section must progress through the cars in order to reach the engine and take control). These two elements are so clear, precise, and simple that the film can be comfortably sprawling in other aspects—in particular, Bong is able to explore distinct and heightened visual styles without derailing the narrative or losing sight of the gritty reality of life aboard the Snowpiercer. This ability is particularly clear when the rebellious tail passengers violently storm a series of cars, as the viewer is subject to a series of distinct environments, from a dimly lit car of heavily armed guardsmen, to the bright and clean schoolroom car, filled with the smiling faces of children. These visually disjunct spaces are threaded together with a constant forward movement, as well as the tail passengers themselves—dirty, in drab and threadbare clothes, these passengers act as constant, sinister reminders of the true situation on the train. These characters are also given the crucial freedom to be ambiguous, complex, and contradictory without muddling the political issues that Bong explores. The protagonist and valiant leader of the tail car revolution, Curtis Everett (Chris Evans), is revealed to have a dark and troubled past. A father-daughter pair of genius drug addicts (Song Kang-ho and Go Ah-sung) are driven by pure self-interest, but become vital to the success of the rebellion. None of these or other characters are allowed to remain on the same moral footing that they were introduced on, however, as an increasingly dire situation prompts developments and revelations regarding their personal codes of ethics. Even the real nature of the revolution that Curtis leads, when it is finally explained, utterly upends expectations about good and evil, while the clear imagery about the evils of hegemonic government and the power of fear tactics remain as clear as they were when our knowledge was still limited to the reality of the tail car.

The action in Okja takes place over a much wider space, split evenly between the United States and South Korea. The film follows a young Korean girl, Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun), and Okja, her pet “super pig,” a species created by the sinister Mirando Corporation to make meat production more efficient and (supposedly) sustainable. The plot necessitates an ensemble cast, which is split into two general groups: those working with Mirando, and members of the Animal Liberation Front (AFL). Conflicts between these groups arise through the film, as both attempt to secure their own fate for Okja. As direct as these interactions may be (hijacking a Mirando truck, breaking into their facilities, and disrupting their operations), they lack much of the intimacy and immediacy that made Snowpiercer so visceral. That’s not to say that Okja isn’t violent or jarring at times, but these moments don’t land with the same effective artistry. One of the most violent scenes in Snowpiercer comes in the car of guardsmen, where an utter bloodbath takes place as the train passes through a tunnel. Bong plays with perspective and light here, portraying the violence with an obliqueness that makes it all the more grotesque. In contrast, violence in Okja mostly comes in the form of violence against Okja herself. Bong elects to show these scenes of animal cruelty completely, which serves as important motivation for the AFL but lessens their visual impact. In a similar vein, Okja’s action sequences are rooted much more in realism, further limiting opportunities for Bong to play with the extremes of his visual style, as well as opening a door for more specific political tangents that are ultimately more distracting than it is illuminating. One example of this allusion to modern politics that caught popular interest was a frame featuring the leaders of Mirando grouped around a table, watching a disastrous newscast on the activities of the AFL. The positions and appearances of the characters are designed to mimic the famous photo of the White House Situation Room following the killing of Osama bin Laden. The image is an interesting artifact of satire when viewed in a vacuum, but in the context of the film, however, political statements like this feel less clear—is the film about militarism or corporatism? Is the US government that subject of ridicule, and if not, who is? Because Bong decides to deal with such varied political topics, story coherence is instead found in the consistency of character morals. From the start of the film, those involved in corporate and commercial exploits, particularly the whimsically evil Mirando sisters (Tilda Swinton), have purely impure goals: that is, to continue with the cruel super pig program in order to maximize profit. On the other side of the spectrum are the members of the ALF—a sizable cast in themselves, these characters are almost all on the same page politically, and the complexity of their tactics of direct action are left mostly unexplored. When one member of the AFL makes a morally questionable decision, this is characterized as a personal fault rather than a systematic one among its members, making the reversal of the mistake a simpler narrative task.

Bong Joon-Ho is a filmmaker unafraid to make a statement, whether it be in the form of inventive visuals, eclectic storylines, or controversial politics. While Okja is the film of Bong’s that seems to be making more wave, both in terms of its production and its content, I feel that it’s Snowpiercer which deserves this notoriety. Of course, both films are visually striking and constitute noble forays into an eccentric and stylized world of sci-fi. But when it comes to politics, Snowpiercer is far more effective at delivering the message.

(Pseudo) Silence: A Short Study of Visual Comedy (Faith)

This year is the 100th anniversary of one of the greatest silent comedian’s first on-screen appearance—in 1917, a young Buster Keaton was featured in Fatty Arbuckle’s two-reeler The Butcher Boy, beginning his career in film. Coincidentally, this year also saw my first exposure to Keaton’s work; after watching The General, the director was transformed in my mind from a distant figure of history to a true genius of comedy. Though his greatest films are nearing a century old, I was struck with their lasting comedic power. Keaton’s films captured my interest on both a historic and cinematic level, but held my interest through something harder to describe: a kind of dual quality of familiarity and novelty. Some instinct seemed to draw me towards these films as undeniably funny, and yet, when I consider recent comedies, I saw nothing quite like Keaton’s work. I wanted to know more about how silent comedy has influenced films and what modern comedies can learn from its techniques. Delving into this topic quickly took me to the works of Jacques Tati, a filmmaker who was directly influenced by Keaton, and whose work Keaton praised repeatedly. To see where similarities and evolutions in comedy were present in the directors’ works, I decided to take a closer look at the films widely regarded to be each’s masterpiece—for Keaton, The General (1926); for Tati, Play Time (1967).

One of the most obvious similarities between these films is the relative lack of dialogue. Of course, this is partly because The General is silent, but Keaton also deliberately kept his use of title cards far below that of his competitors. In Play Time, a similar aversion to dialogue doesn't erase character speech altogether, but makes what little appears mostly nonsynchronous. This stylistic choice makes the sparse dialogue, whether it's the tittering of the tour group or ruckus of nightclub patrons, feel more like another component of the shot, rather than part of the narrative. This decision adds a particular sense of depersonalization to Play Time’s modern setting, but for both directors allowed a focus on more cinematic elements of comedy. Of course this didn’t entirely exclude sound—sound effects (or the lack thereof) are used in both films in the service of gags, and are always come hand in hand with the director’s understanding of how to play with perspective within the frame. A perfect example from The General is when protagonist Johnnie Gray (Keaton) rides his train across the front lines of battle, remaining oblivious to the war being waged right behind him simply because his back is turned. Using the lack of sound effects to his advantage, Keaton suggests that Johnnie’s perception is limited to that of the audience—what the viewer can’t hear is accepted as silent, and we’re able to both marvel at and believe in his ignorance. This interaction of sound and perspective appears throughout Tati’s films, and is used to masterful effect in Play Time. One scene early in the film follows Monsieur Hulot (Tati) as he waits in a sleek, modern office building. Tati exploits the environment—here, the clear glass walls—to repeatedly withhold the sound of Hulot’s motions. This initially postpones the audience hearing the sound of the squeaking chairs, for instance, and subverts our expectations of synchronous sound when Hulot begins slipping on the waxed tile floors. Instead of hearing the scuffles of his strained movements, our sound perspective is moved outside the building, where we hear only passing traffic. This manipulation of sound is simple but effective, as the audience is left with both the gleeful task of filling in these sonic blanks as well as the implication that Hulot is on display to the city around him.

For both directors, geometry is a crucial part of both their artful cinematography and the construction of jokes. Though the implications of each world is different, both Tati and Keaton construct highly stylized and perfectly orchestrated environments, the mechanics of which are exploited for our amusement. In one scene in Play Time, the camera rests outside a modern apartment building, where we see multiple families sit down to watch TV in a cutaway view made possible by their massive single-pane windows. Tati turns the camera degrees to the left and right, establishing each family’s positions as they sit in front of their screens. As the camera returns to the initial angle, however, the barriers of the apartment walls become invisible, and we’re suddenly able to imagine that the families are watching each other, rather than TV, combining their actions and reactions in unexpected ways. All the while, beneath the scene is Tati’s commentary on the ways in which modern technology structure lives and limit connection; though it seems that the families are interacting, the truth remains that they are each physically separate, confined by the box of their own window.

Though it has an entirely different tone from this scene of Tati’s, Keaton’s classic cannon gag in The General similarly utilizes the geometry of the film world in order to surprise us. By a series of unfortunate circumstances, train engineer Johnnie Gray (Keaton) finds himself hanging off of a moving engine, in the line of fire of a cannon being pulled along behind him. Everything about the geography of this scene is used to increase our anticipation: sharp lines and symmetric framing trap Johnnie in his situation; constant forward motion builds tension; the futility of Johnnie’s small and rapid movements contrast with the unrelenting stillness of the massive cannon. What ends the gag and saves our hero is an expected change in geometry—a curve in the railroad tracks sends the cannonball off at an angle, just missing Johnnie and nearly striking his enemies’ train instead.

This scene also works as a microcosm for the film’s take on the world, a view which The General shares with Keaton’s other works. Johnnie, though he has a different name and inhabits a different setting, is essentially the same as Keaton’s other protagonists: a plucky young man in a bewildering and hostile environment which can only be conquered with a combination of human ingenuity and sheer luck. Keaton uses the frame of the Civil War to create an underdog protagonist (meaning, unfortunately, that Johnnie wears the uniform of the Confederacy) and exploits the technology of the time in service of gags—principally through trains, but with other military equipment as well. Beyond this, however, the film’s setting is ultimately unimportant; it’s the greater greater struggle against an automated world which defines Keaton’s comedy. In contrast, Tati’s Monsieur Hulot is a constant throughout his films, down to his signature coat and pipe. This difference is vital to developing some of Tati’s themes: namely, the stark ways in which Hulot is at odds with his modern environment, constantly teetering on the brink of being utterly left behind. Whereas Johnnie is a literal engineer of his world, always able to move himself through his surroundings with determination and a little elbow grease, Hulot feels more like a tourist in his own life, moving with an uncertain rhythm between one attraction to the next. Play Time is also uniquely tied to its setting, as Tati uses Paris to draw our attention to the obliviousness of the tour group—the camera only ever glimpses the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe in the reflections on the gleaming glass doors the women pass through—and comment on the commercialization of culture—the travel agency features the same dull-looking skyscraper in its posters for France, America, and India. And unlike Keaton, Tati doesn’t try to suggest that his world is conquerable; Hulot doesn’t save the day and get the girl, after all. Instead, Tati uses the film to show us the absurdity of modern life and encourage us, if we can’t change it, to at least revel in it. If this idea wasn’t already evident in the core of the film, the final scene punctuates it perfectly. Given Tati’s artistic touch, we watch as the ritualized chaos of a endless traffic circle becomes a carousel, a symphony of pattern and sound that is all at once ridiculous, biting, and beautiful.

While Keaton and Tati certainly crafted very different worlds in these films, they nonetheless share striking similarities in their cultivation of cinematic comedy. Since the arrival of sound films, comedies have had dialogue as something to lean on for laughs. I find that too often, comedies simply feature characters delivering lines, letting us forget that we’re watching a movie rather than trying to exploit the medium to any artistic ends. Keaton’s origins in the silent era clearly pushed him towards these innovations, but Tati is the perfect example of how this legacy can persist, evolve, and flourish—if only directors are willing to look beyond dialogue and play with silence.

Dunkirk and the Evolution of the Modern War Film (Gabe)

I love to go to the movies, but my seemingly boundless physical inertia keeps me screening films from the comfort of my couch unless a true outlier comes into my life. However, over my summer in Los Angeles, my cousin, with whom I was staying, worked at the local movie theater, a five-minute drive away. After a full week of the latest releases like Baby Driver and the latest Planet of the Apes we rushed in to see Dunkirk, which led to our fiercest, but not our longest, cinematic debate of July.

My cousin was underwhelmed by the film because in his opinion the film’s structure prohibited emotional attachment to the individuals we saw portrayed because we never got a chance to know them individually. Rather, it was almost entirely nonstop action after the film’s initial commencement, and the dialogue was minimal to say the least. He additionally thought that these decisions by Nolan reduced his ability to empathize with the characters in a meaningful way because they were overwhelmed by the spectacle of the piece. This meant that in the balance of the story, individuals were given less attention. I however, while agreeing with his analysis of the film’s focus, disagreed as to its effect on the viewer and what Nolan’s directorial intention may have been.

It seemed to me that the fact individual humans were dwarfed by the combat was in many regards the point of the film. This movie didn’t read like his previous works in which he focused on specific characters and their evolution over time in the face of superhumanly long odds. This was no Memento or The Prestige in which the audience was being actively bonded with the protagonists and shown depths of their interiority that only film as a medium can capture and display. Here instead, Nolan seemed to be doing the opposite, and intentionally. By making a conscious decision to rework the war movie formula he presented battle in a new way that struck me as a departure from much of its genre. For example, the classic war film Saving Private Ryan, consciously and intentionally draws the viewers’ attention to the horrors of war in direct relation to the individual. Humans are horribly and bloodily butchered in all manner of traumatizing ways, and the camera forces you to look at it in excruciating detail. The camera swings around grotesque scenes where young soldiers hold their now detached limbs in anguish while still others are mowed down by machine gun fire all across a red misty canvas. I pointed out to my cousin that in avoiding these tropes, Dunkirk opted instead to present the events of this battle with a sense of historical reenactment that was not simple entertainment. I said that the film isn’t interested in forcing you to grapple with the brutal realities of war for individuals, it is instead showing you something so massive in scale that it cannot be fully appreciated by the casual viewer. I demarcated this difference in form and content, and suggested that perhaps his perspective might be informed by his preconceived expectations about the structure and focus of war films. This film relies more heavily on the viewer being able to separate out and individually note different elements of each shot, which neither of us had been expecting, so I saw how perhaps a perceived bait and switch had alienated him.

A scene I suggested as evidence of my theory was when the young British soldiers are trapped in the hull of a grounded civilian boat when they begin taking on machine gun fire. The bullets pierce the hull, water starts pouring in, and because the soldiers have no way to escape without being shot down they must plug up the holes with their fingers to avoid drowning, all the while as more shots whistle through the boat. This scene was perfectly emblematic of my perspective because the camera made no attempt to focus the viewer on the specific men being injured and killed by the firing. The attention was instead on the situation as a whole and the onus of actively participating in the that portrayal is squarely on the viewer. Additionally, it served to disguise the scope of the violence on screen by showing it as it occurs and not providing additional commentary. The lack of gore and extreme close ups of wounded men belies the film’s brutality and creates a separation between the audience and the film that only the viewer can close.

I articulated these points less succinctly and significantly more loudly than I have here, and despite my exquisite communication skills I think my cousin and I were simply on different pages. For me, this film has found room for innovation while operating in a genre that has a great propensity for stagnation. That alone held my attention.

Director to Watch: Taika Waititi (Faith)

New Zealand director Taika Waititi first appeared on American screens in 2004, when he received an Oscar nomination for his short film Two Cars, One Night. In his signature comedic style, the filmmaker made an impression on audiences by feigning sleep as the nominees were read. In the years following this auspicious start, Waititi’s career in New Zealand has exploded, with his films becoming some of the country’s most successful. This year, his work will be returning to the American film scene in a form I find as unlikely as it is dangerous: as the Marvel Studios blockbuster, Thor: Ragnarok. Waititi’s directorial style is strikingly unique, especially when compared to the typical American superhero flick. The stories Waititi tells are small and relatively simple, following short and meaningful episodes in the lives of ordinary people. His second feature film, Boy (2010, US release: 2012) is both the director’s most masterful film to date, and an embodiment of all these qualities that seem so incompatible with the Marvel model.

Boy is, at its core, a film about reconciliation. The story, set in 1984, follows 11 year-old “Boy” and his troubled relationship with a long-absent father who has returned to their home in the New Zealand countryside after serving a prison sentence. The coming-of-age story avoids cliché simply through its authenticity–something that comes in part from Waititi’s personal experiences growing up in New Zealand. The film finds the difficult meeting point of immaturity and maturity and presents this juncture in a way that feels wonderfully true; full of both pain and humor.

Through both plot and visuals, the film equates maturity with the acceptance of difficult truths and immaturity with fantasy. Truths press at the characters–and the audience–from every angle; among them, the truths that mothers will die, fathers will hit their children, and people will ostracize those who are different from them. Boy’s younger brother, Rocky, acts as the film’s personification of youthful innocence, and responds to these truths with the power of his imagination. Early in the film, we see him berated by schoolchildren on a passing bus, to which he responds by raising a hand, scowling, and channeling his supposed psychic abilities to challenge them. Interspersed in the shots are images of stop-motion children’s drawings–we see Rocky’s imagined powers come to life on the page, exploding the bus. This vignette is just one example of the film’s use of fantasy, which appears again in the form of Boy’s collages, his father’s sparklers, and a dream sequence depicting his father’s fistfight with a biker gang. In these moments, we see artistry in hidden places–a stylistic choice that removes us from the linear progression of the plot but doesn’t distract from the narrative and in fact, provides a richer picture of our characters’ psychologies.

The quiet and artistic genius of Boy is what initially endeared the film to me, and that’s exactly why I worry that Waititi’s collaboration with a studio like Marvel could be disastrous. Those with even a passing knowledge of modern blockbuster films likely know that Marvel’s level of oversight is far-reaching at best, and hegemonic at worst. How could a director like Waititi, known for his unique sense of humor and whimsical, heartfelt stories, be able to develop a film that fits his own vision in this kind of environment? While I have no doubt that this will be a challenge, I have managed to find some hope for his successful foray into the world of blockbusters in his most recent film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016).

When Hunt for the Wilderpeople was released last year, it quickly shattered the New Zealand box office record (a record that was being held at the time by Boy). This improvement in box office performance is just one the ways that Wilderpeople constitutes a transitional piece. In terms of content, the film balances many of Waititi’s classic characters while incorporating striking and new visual spectacle through action. The film follows its 13 year-old protagonist, Ricky, and his foster father as they traverse the New Zealand bush together, unintentionally sparking a nationwide manhunt. This synopsis reveals the most obvious similarities the film shares with Boy: both feature a young protagonist and his father figure as they grapple with the nature of their relationship. The two share thematic similarities as well, tackling issues of maturity, grief, and trauma–but it’s how these ideas are explored which leads to their stylistic differences, and, in the case of Wilderpeople, gives audiences a glimpse of how Waititi might craft an action film for a multi-billion dollar studio.

For the most part, Wilderpeople feels more fast-paced than Boy. In places where the earlier film would have made its points quietly, exploring the bittersweet truth of its deadpan humor, Wilderpeople presses forward in constant motion. This pace is paired with a sense of intensity, seen in the snappy dialogue, the skillful use of montage, and even the depth of color that characterizes the New Zealand wilderness. The film also explores this intensity through visual dynamism, constantly building tension between wide shots and close-ups of varying tone–violent, as Ricky applies mud to his face like war paint; flashy, as a young girl rides horseback in slow-motion; delightfully macabre, as childish handwriting composes a forged suicide note. The intensity and pacing, though they don’t allow for the same exploration of Waititi’s artistic abilities that audiences saw in Boy, work in service of both the nature of film’s themes on the search for family and emotional connection, as well as the narrative’s scope–this journey involves more than just a family or town, but pulls in the entire nation (and its police force). The stakes that have been built up throughout the film culminate–in typical Hollywood fashion–with a car chase. Waititi is able to use this scene for more than just its spectacle, however, and deftly weaves in crucial dialogue (both comedic and tragic), necessary characterization, and artful composition.

While Boy show the artistic height of Waititi’s abilities, Wilderpeople contains something equally exciting for his fans: a potential bridge with the world of the blockbusters. It would be foolish not to fear that Waititi’s creativity and spirit will ultimately be hidden behind the flash of big-name characters and in the overly-complex, intertwining plots of the Marvel universe. But for those more inclined to optimism, I present Hunt for the Wilderpeople as reason enough to hope that the director can overcome these obstacles and produce something genuine.

What's Your Favorite Movie? (Tori)

My sophomore year at Hopkins will be tied to a lot of different things.  It’ll be tied to my double in McCoy, meals at Nolan’s, and long rehearsals of Spring Awakening in Swirnow Theater.  It’ll be tied to my friends here, new and old, and the moments we’ve shared together.  It’ll also always be tied to film blogging.  Film blogging has been an integral part of my sophomore year.  I have been constantly on the lookout for films to watch and concepts about which to write.  This post will bring my film blogging to a close, so I knew I had to choose something epic and rich in order to end the year on the perfect, exciting note.  I looked directly to Alfred Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock has completely transformed my relationship with films.  I, like many others, I’m sure, detest being asked what my favorite film is.  My cinematic preferences are constantly changing based on my mood; when I’m frustrated I’ll want to watch something very different than when I’m elated.  But if I were forced to choose—a gun drawn to my head—Rear Window might be the one to slip out due to its emphasis on some of the themes I find most interesting in the world like metacinema, voyeurism, and the male gaze.  It’s one of those films you can watch a million times and still not pick up on all the themes and techniques employed by Hitchcock to tell the gripping story.  Obviously, I am a big Hitchcock fan.  Yet, shockingly, I had never gotten around to watching perhaps his most renowned film, Vertigo.  Until now.  I decided it was fitting, for my exciting final post, to write about what is known as one of the most epic and rich films to ever be created.  I was not disappointed.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

As our protagonist, ex-detective Scottie, is about to enter the church at the end of the film, he states that there is: “One final thing I have to do…and then I’ll be free of the past.”  Throughout the film, I picked up on a preoccupation with time and the contradictory feelings of both nostalgia and disdain for the past.  Characters grapple with the question: is it possible to ever be free of the past?  Near the beginning of the film, Gavin Elster, an old friend of Scottie’s, discusses San Francisco, the setting of the film: “Well, San Francisco’s changed.  The things that spell San Francisco to me are disappearing fast…I should have like to have lived here then.  The color, the excitement, the power, the freedom…”  He is clearly sentimental about the way San Francisco used to be, yet it seems that is a distant memory. 

When researching Carlotta Valdes, the woman it seems has possessed Elster’s wife, the bookstore owner explains: “So [Carlotta’s husband] kept the child and threw [Carlotta] away.  You know, men could do that in those days.  They had the power and the freedom.”  Once again, we are reminded of the power and freedom people had in the past, but this time the sentiment of nostalgia is complicated, as power and freedom are tied to the mistreatment of Carlotta by her husband.  Scottie, throughout the film, is set on doing away with the past; he desperately wants to “stop being haunted.”  But perhaps this is a lost hope.  Scottie puts together the different aspects of his deceit by Elster and his mistress, Judy Barton, who was pretending to be Elster’s wife the entire time.  He realizes that Elster was the mastermind behind everything and now has access to: “all of his wife’s money and all that freedom and power.”  Again, we hear these words “freedom and power,” but now in a very different context.  Elster has succeeded in becoming that free and powerful man of the past.  Additionally, he abandoned his wife just as Carlotta’s husband abandoned her long before.  What is more, Judy’s death transpires in the same way the real Madeleine’s death did; they both fall out of the same church window.  All Scottie wants is to stop being haunted—by the death of the police officer at the beginning of the film, by his vertigo, by Madeleine after her death, but it is no use.  Vertigo suggests that the past is not something one can ever escape.

It is crucial to understand this idea of “freedom and power” in relation to gender in Vertigo.  Do any of the women in this film have any freedom or power?  At the end of the film, Scottie interrogates Judy about Elster’s use of her in his grand scheme: “He made you over just like I made you over…Did he train you?  Did he rehearse you?  Did he tell you exactly what to do—what to say?”  The men of Vertigo are consistently controlling the women.  Like Carlotta’s husband controls Carlotta and Elster controls both Judy and his wife, Scottie similarly controls Judy when he implores her to change her appearance to look more like Madeleine.  The idea of the male gaze is incredibly prevalent in this film.  Just as Jeff becomes interested in Lisa after she has become the subject of his voyeuristic gaze, Scottie becomes interested in Madeleine solely after watching her.  In this way, he is introduced to her less as a person and more as an object to be observed.  It is true that Scottie is manipulated by Elster, but I would argue that the women of Vertigo are the ones truly being controlled.

Upon further reflection, I probably could have written about a different aspect of Vertigo for every single one of my blog posts this year; it’s the kind of film that clouds your mind with thoughts.  However, one thing is absolutely clear to me: I think I have a new favorite movie.  

Writer's Block in Movies, and Barton Fink as a Meta-Film (Jaeyoung)

 The author Charles Bukowski once wrote, “Writing about writer’s block is better than not writing at all.” Therefore, I will write this blog about screenwriters experiencing writer’s block.

 There are actually many movies that feature this nightmare, including Stranger than Fiction, Ruby Sparks, Secret Window, Limitless, The Shining, Barton Fink, and Adaptation.

 In Limitless and Ruby Sparks, writer’s block is featured early in the plot. Both protagonists of these movies, Eddie Morra and Calvin Weir-Fields, stare at blank pages and become easily distracted, until drugs and romance cure them of their disease.

 Meanwhile, Steven King doesn’t let his characters move on from this debilitating syndrome; the Secret Window and The Shining were both adapted from his novels, and they both feature a struggling writer who slips into a murderous rampage. Perhaps murder is the answer to every writer’s frustration?

 These films portray the frustration of writer’s block creatively and artistically (the tantalizing flashing cursor in Limitless, the anxious blank page atop Calvin’s typewriter in Ruby Sparks, the repeated "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" in The Shining). However, the two films that fully explore the malaise of their respective screenwriters are Barton Fink and Adaptation, and I will view these works as meta-films.

 In the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink, the eponymous screenplay novice struggles to write a B-movie about boxer Wallace Beery. Unlike Limitless, Ruby's Spark, and The Shining, there is considerable emphasis on Barton Fink's environment; Barton's dilapidated hotel room, not him, seems to receive the most focus in the Writer's Block scenes. The slimy, peeling walls, the mysterious beach portrait, the persistent buzzing of mosquitos: it's almost as though the room is preventing him from writing.

 What makes Barton Fink so brilliant is how it meshes fantastical elements to explore Barton's frustration and confusion. It almost seems like the Coen Brothers knew poor Barton's situation intimately well...

 ...and they did! They wrote the Barton Fink when they themselves experienced writer's block with Miller's Crossing screenplay. In fact, there are so many connections between Barton and the Coen Brothers that it is difficult not to view Barton as a projection of the brothers' frustrated selves. Here are a few similarities:

• They wear glasses
• They are Jewish
• They all call New York their home
• They are highly educated
• They struggle with their writing material

 The first three similarities are fairly straightforward, but the fourth and fifth comparisons could use elaboration. Joel Coen went to NYU and Ethan Coen went to Princeton, where he wrote a 41-page essay titled, “Two Views on Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy.” If that title doesn’t scream “educated elite,” I don’t know what would. This characteristic is also found in Barton, when he talks to Charlie, the "common man."

                               CHARLIE

               And I could tell you some stories –

                               BARTON

               Sure you could!  And yet many writers

               do everything in their power to

               insulate themselves from the common

               man – from where they live, from

               where they trade, from where they

               fight and love and converse and –

               and – and... so naturally their work

               suffers, and regresses into empty

               formalism and – well, I'm spouting

               off again, but to put it in your

               language, the theater becomes as

               phony as a three dollar bill.

 

 I'm not sure if the Coen Brothers are pretentious; if they are, I would definitely draw another parallel there.

 I've written that they both struggle with their writing material, but the material they work with are very different; Coen Brothers had been having a difficult time with the highly convoluted plot of Miller’s Crossing, while Barton Fink was tasked to write a bio flick about a boxer. In addition, Barton and the Coen Brothers have different degrees of freedom. The Coen Brothers have almost complete control over their movies (they direct, produce, write, and edit all their major films; they later created their own production company, the Mike Ross Company), but Barton’s screenwriting was heavily scrutinized by Libnick, his boss (must have a lot of action, be fruity, but not too fruity, have the Barton Fink quality, etc.). This is why the brothers have stated that Barton's struggles were not meant to reflect their own experiences with the industry. It is rather their frustration as writers that they channel unto Barton.

 To summarize, the Coen Brothers created a less likable version of themselves and dragged him through hell.

 Charlie Kaufman, on the other hand, does the opposite in Adaptation; he splits himself into the sad, frustrated but sophisticated Charlie Kaufman and the happier, simpler fictional twin brother, Donald Kaufman. In the movie (and in real life, apparently) Charlie struggles to write a film adaptation about the Orchid Thief, partly because it lacks a "filmable" plot, and mostly because he is extremely worried about not doing the book justice. On the contrary, Donald writes cliched psychological thrillers. With Donald's help, the movie about a mopey writer finally develops a faster-paced (and pulpy) plot, as they discover the author of Orchid Thief's secret and fight to survive her murderous rampage.

 What's interesting to note is that Kaufman treats both his characters with sympathy; how Charlie feels, thinks, acts is all laid out for the audience to observe, and Donald's unsophisticated (suggests that Flowers for Algernon is about flowers) and enthusiastic view of life is lovable. As works of meta-cinema, Barton Fink and Adaptation are the antithesis to each other; while the Coen Brothers are the smart-aleck bullies that make their character's life hard, Charlie Kaufman is the parent who asks, "Tell me what what's wrong."

Neon Dream (Conor)

      "Chiba" by Uqbar is Back is licensed under  CC BY 2.0

     Tokyo Drifter (1965) is a masterpiece of low budget, mass produced cinema. Despite the tight control the studio attempted to exert over the film, Director Seijun Suzuki defies the genre conventions of Japanese Yakuza films and completely ignores aesthetic tradition to create a stunning and complicated mish-mash between a B-movie and an art house film. Suzuki’s stubborn, revolutionary attitude towards film turned what was intended to be a potboiler Japanese gangster thriller into absurdist pop art. He is a film guerilla and Tokyo Drifter is one of his greatest and most powerful acts of rebellion.

            Despite the incredibly colorful and lively setting, the action that follows is tragedy. Tokyo Drifter is full of sense that the old times are changing. The many Yakuza that feature in the film are depicted as anachronistic and clinging to tradition and honor in the face of a world that values neither. Otsuka, the antagonist of the film is beholden not to honor and tradition, but to money. He is the new breed of gangster as he himself points out early on in the film. The many non-diegetic inserts of an enormous dead tree echo the feeling of impending permanent change–and with it, death–that permeates the entire film. The surreal urban setting of Tokyo best represented by the frequent montages of neon signs can now be understood to stand for the destruction of the old way of life by the new. The seductive allure of wealth, bright lights, and the type of unending leisure that comes from living one’s life entirely in Jazz clubs–something apparently every character in the film does–outshines the duty, honor, and restraint of the past.

    Suzuki is not lamenting the change, however. The old gangsters are by no means sympathetic, and Tetsu’s comic insistence on total loyalty to his boss almost kills him. Contrasting the seriousness of Testsu’s faithfulness to the old ways with the situations it places him reveals his devotion to be absurd. In one instance he is aided by an ally of his boss, Umetani, only to have that ally try to murder him. Umetani does not wish to kill Tetsu but does so out of unquestionable loyalty to his boss that just ordered the betrayal of the man he once called son. Suzuki exposes the incoherence of this ideology and lampoons it not just to make a statement about loyalty itself but to satirize an entire tradition of Japanese filmmaking based on characters like Tetsu. Suzuki isn’t just using surreal visuals to defy filmic conventions. The entire structure of his film is a conscious rejection of the standard dramatic form of yakuza films and chanbara.

    His absurdity and rebelliousness against standard film form manifest in some extremely radical ways. Suzuki was forced to make product placement details in order to finance his films and so he openly included advertisements in the most jarring way possible. There are two separate ads for hair dryers in Tokyo Drifter. Neither of them are even remotely disguised. One includes a close-up shot of an actual advertisement for the dryers and both of them completely disrupt the scenes they are placed in. In Worholian fashion Suzuki has embraced the commercial entirely and as such has stripped it of its power. Instead of letting the corporate subtly coopt his film into an ad he openly coopts the corporate into his art.

            Suzuki’s iconoclastic subversiveness elevated what should have been a B gangster movie into high art. What should have been a standard schlocky shoot-em-up became a visual meditation on the state of the B-movie form. Through Films like Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill Suzuki proves that with an aesthetic vision and a rebellious attitude towards everything under the sun it is still possible to make film art under the most unfavorable conditions. He is a living reminder that all cinema, even cheap B-movies, can be great cinema.

Last Production Diary (Hee Won)

         I received an email from John on Thursday saying that our film was here. I stared into the word “came back” for a while and shut my laptop and went to sleep. The next morning, I checked my email to see if its still there and (un)fortunately it was.

         I was waiting for John at the center, and when he entered the room I squeaked “NO!!!!!!” I don’t remember exactly why I said no but that was the only thing that popped into my mind. I was so excited to see it, but at the same time so terrified that I wished I didn’t have to see it. The box came with the film negatives and a hard drive.

    My heart was actually pounding when I opened the box. I had no idea what I was going to see. My only hope was to at least I could see something when I opened the files. Although I had experience from freaking out excessively over film during my classes last semester, I still was freaking out. Very nervous and paranoid, I messaged Sue saying that our film was here, sending her a photo of the box and its contents so that she would freak out with me.

         Sue and I weren’t ready to watch it. The whole day, I walked around campus hugging the box that contained our film. We met up in the library after her class and decided that we shouldn’t watch the film because we are not mentally prepared. Sue was tired and caught up in work and I wasn’t mentally strong enough to see it by myself. So, we promised we would see it on Sunday.

         Sunday came and we were at the DMC with the orange Lacie hard drive connected to a Mac. We opened the 45Gigabyte file labeled “JHU Hee Won Han” and stared at it for a minute. We took a deep breath, looked at each other nervously, and hit the play button.

         After 5 seconds of darkness, an image appeared on screen and we screamed “yay,” the fact that there was something on the file at all was a huge relief to us. We watched our clip with some hushed commentary for 36 minutes. When we finished, we hugged and agreed that we were really proud of what we were able to do. Some of the shots of the cherry blossoms were beautiful. All the chaos we went through to get the footage was so worth it. We watched the scenes on repeat, admiring how beautiful the cherry blossoms were. There were definitely some shots that we were not happy with because of the low light inside the house, but it wasn’t horrible. We could definitely fix some of them in post.

         After looking at our 16mm footage, we looked at the footage that we shot on digital. The train scenes, which I was most worried about were pretty decent. I was worried about the color temperature throughout the entire shoot on the train, but it looked fine. Some of the shots were really nicely lit and overall we were happy with what we had.  We went back to the clips and exclaim things like ‘hell yeah, that lighting was on point” “I love this framing so much!!” “What a great line!!” We were having so much fun seeing what we had made.

         It was a really good moment for us. Although we are far from being done since we have SO much work to do in post, we are starting the next phase of our film with good material and happy mindset. Sue and I went out for a drink to celebrate and talked about everything that went wrong during our shoot. It was nice because we could actually laugh about it now.

         I came back to my house and sat in front of my computer and thought about everything that Sue and I went through to create this film. It started off as a conversation, then became a script and now its actually a film. Because Sue and I were the only ones really invested in making this happen, we had to put so much work into it. From pre-production to production and even looking forward to post, we’ve done so much and have a lot to do. To be very honest, most of the process was difficult and stressful. So many things fell through and went wrong that I can’t even count them all. However, there were some really breathtaking moments. There were moments so great that I forgot about all of the difficulties.

         Overall, I’m just proud of myself and Sue, and I feel very fortunate that I had so much support from people around me. My crew—especially Jack Cullinane and Lydia Milano—were so amazing and I can’t thank them enough for everything they have done. John was helpful in every way possible, and my actor was simply marvelous. But most of all, I thank my co-director Sue who was with me every step along the way and kept me sane at the most insane times. I would not have the started project if were not for her, and I would not have been able to complete it without her at my side all times. I feel blessed to have been able to come this far with the help of so many great people.

         Although it sounds like I’m done, I’m really not. I have so much more to do. Our goal is to finish the film before I graduate and screen it sometime next semester. I had a lot of fun writing this production diary, it really helped me organize my thoughts, about what happened and where to go next. I hope this was interesting to read, or at least fun to read about my painful stories! This will be my last production diary, and lastly I want to thank Helena Chung for reading all of my posts before I submit and giving me the most helpful feedback. 

Production Diary #6 (Hee Won)

         I am writing this post on April 20th, two days after we finished shooting. From the 15th to 18th I experienced every spectrum emotion possible, ranging from exuberance to devastation. Although I cannot feel my shoulders from carrying so much equipment over the weekend, and I have 15 bruises across my four limbs from my carelessness in navigating the set, I still have not fully realized that I am done shooting the film. With no exaggeration, these three days were some of the most panic-inducing, stressful, hectic days of my Hopkins life. It was hard. There is no other way to put it, but I think I enjoyed it. I think.

         The chaos started on Friday, picking up equipment from three different locations: the DMC, Gilman 35, and the Film Center. Because not everything could fit in our small four seat car that we borrowed from a friend, we had to make multiple trips just to have everything in one location. After getting all the equipment sorted out, we rushed to Giant and bought all the food that we need for the three-day shoot. Then, I picked up the actors while Sue unloaded everything and delivered the car back to her friend. I ran around all of Charles Village collecting props that I reserved from various people. I walked a total of 13000 steps from 5pm to 11:59 pm. When we were done with everything, it was 12:30 am and we had to wake up at 5am to transport all the equipment to the location and start production design. 

        The first morning was the busiest time of the whole day. Sue had to  drive from Homewood to our location in Hamden many times to transport the crew and extras. I had to bring all the equipment to the set and start production design. In the midst of all that, actors started to arrive and and I had to greet them and give them instructions and answer their questions. We started shooting at 9:30am and ended at about 6pm which was 30 minutes over our planned schedule. I did not think that so many things could happen in the 9 hours of time that we had. There wasn’t anything that was extremely horrifying but there were some very stressful situations. The cat scene was almost impossible to shoot, because the cat got annoyed at everyone on set, lighting was tricky with very little daylight coming into the house, and we had some trouble with equipment and props. Because there was such low light, we ended up having to shoot some of our scenes in digital with the Canon C300. After the shoot, we sent everyone home and we stayed behind at the location until 9pm to return the house to its original state. When we prepared everything for our Sunday shoot, it was 11pm.

         Our Sunday shoot began in Penn Station at 10am. We were worried because we really hadn’t gotten the permission we needed to shoot inside the station. Because we did not want to be noticed by the Amtrak police, we went into the station with minimum crew, and acted as if we were just a student group. We managed to get the scene of our character getting in to the ticket line without being noticed but we definitely got attention from the Penn station employees when we were shooting a scene of her sitting on one of the benches inside: one of the guys at the front desk stood up with his arms crossed and gave us a stern look. We all left the station hurriedly before getting caught and finished our Penn station scene in exactly 20 minutes. After this scene, we relocated and shot multiple tracking shots of the grandmother. Because  it was almost impossible to load the dolly, we ended up using a wheel chair. It was scorching hot and the wheel chair was very jerky so it was difficult to get a good shot. We wrapped after shooting two more indoor scenes. We managed to finish around 5:30 pm and when we sent everyone home it was about 6pm. After transporting our actors, we returned the equipment and props that we didn’t need,  and planned our shoot for the final day.

         I woke up at 6am before my alarm went off because I was very nervous. We had to shoot inside Union Station and inside the MARC train which were both locations we did not get a full permission from. I was very worried also because we had to shoot all the train scenes in an hour without getting caught by the ticketing agent. I was also worried because our actor, the grandmother, told me that she was not able to get enough sleep last night. We were shooting in 4 locations from 9am to 4pm so it was going to be a tiring day for everyone but it was especially going to be tiring for her. It was indeed a very stressful day. As soon as we got off at Union Station, we started setting up the camera to film a scene of her exiting the station. 2 minutes into shooting, the security officers came to stop us. We thought that they are going to kick us out and makes us format our card, but Sue showed them an email that she exchanged with the Union Station authorities and they just told us to wait for a little. While they made us wait, I spoke to my actor in Korean and secretly kept rolling the camera. After couple of minutes, they came back to us and told us that we had to leave. Because we got what we wanted, we just packed up and left. They came back to us when we were shooting the exterior of the station but we begged them to give us 5 minutes and they did. Because everything was so rushed, I don’t know how everything looks but we did get all the shots that we planned on getting.

         After we shot the conversation scenes near the station and the non-cherry blossom scenes in the tidal basin area, we came back to the station to get on the train. We were extremely exhausted by then, because we shot everything in an hour. Our extras for the scene arrived and we got on the train. Everything felt chaotic inside the train. In the beginning, we panicked because the train car that we wanted to film in was packed with people. After 5 minutes of terror, Sue politely asked if they would willingly move to other parts of the train. Everyone was very nice and gave us the place that we wanted to shoot in. It was a busy hour of me trying to get as many takes as possible without getting caught by anyone. As I was shooting, Jack and other crew members would cue me whenever someone was coming towards me, and I would just drop the camera to a seat next to me and act as if nothing was going on. We got the last shot got 3 minutes before it was time for us to get off at Penn station. After the final shot, I high fived Sue and shouted that it was a wrap.

         We let everyone go, dropped off all of our props and equipment, sent our actors away, and we were actually done. When we were walking back to Sue’s place after everything was over, we talked about how we couldn’t believe that we are done with shooting. We had planned this film for a year and now we are done shooting it. We do have to edit it at some point but I don’t want to think about that right now.

Production Diary 2 (Hee Won)

         Just when I committed to making this film, realistic questions slapped me in the face. Specifically questions about: casting, location scouting, and story boarding.

         At first, when I thought I would not be able to make this film and decided to forget about it, one of the big questions that discouraged me was casting. How am I ever going to find a grandmother, in her 70s, who is Korean, who would be willing to act for a college student’s film with no monetary compensation whatsoever?

         Sue and I searched all over the internet hoping to find some kind of Korean acting community in DC/Baltimore Area but we weren’t successful. Then, we decided to broaden our search and look for grandmothers living in the Baltimore Area. We made a visit to the Greenmount Korean Senior Center hoping we would be able to recruit a member of the community to act in our film. We met with the director of the senior center and emailed her about the project two days later,  but have yet to get a response. We plan to continue with out efforts to find the perfect grandmother, or any grandmother for that matter.

         After the yet unresolved issue of casting, our next immediate problem is location scouting; we need to shoot in a row house, at Penn Station, Union Station and the National Mall. We anticipated that getting permission to shoot inside the train stations would be difficult as it would raise safety concerns with the respective authorities. We contacted both the MTA Baltimore Office and the DC Union Station Office, but still haven’t received a reply. We plan to send another email , or give them a call, or even ask in person, if necessary to get permission to shoot inside the train station and inside the train.

         One other location that is giving us a hard time is the house. We assumed it would be easy to find a house for our shoot because we have friends who live in row houses. However, we could not have been more wrong. None of the five places we went to see seemed suitable for our film. They were either too big or too small, too fraternity-esque or too collegiate. Realizing that we may never be able to find a house that is appropriate for our film within our friend group, we looked for a house on the internet, on AirBnB. Although it sounds crazy, we were able to find couple of houses that matched our vision of the house in our story. Now, we are narrowing down our choices for the house. The tasks of contacting the owners, persuading them to let us use the house for little compensation, convincing them know that this is not a pornography but a student short film remain.

         To be very honest, the past two weeks have been very stressful because it felt like everything was falling apart. We did not hear back from potential casting opportunities and the locations that we hoped for just didn’t seem to fit.  I dreamed multiple times about finding the right grandma and finding the perfect house for the film, only to wake up devastated that they were only dreams. Despite this, one thing that motivated me to work harder was our storyboard.

         One major decision that we had to make after we decided to move forward with this project, was the format we were going to shoot in. I sent my advisor, John Mann, our rough draft of the script last Fall and he suggested that we shoot on film. However, I was hesitant because I had many bad memories with film. I saw everything that could possibly go wrong with shooting on film in two intermediate film courses last spring: there was a piece of hair in one person’s project the whole time and another had to be re-shot in its entirety because it was shot at the wrong frame rate. At times, the camera would suddenly stop after working fine for hours, and the lighting would completely ruin some parts of the film. However, at the same time, I was really enticed by the idea of shooting my project on 16mm.  

(Picture of my Introduction to Film Production Final Project)

         Although I knew it would be painful to deal with all the problems caused by shooting on film, I also love how it looks. There is something amazing about how sunlight looks on film, and the grainy look of the film itself is beautiful. I brought this up with Sue and we talked about the pros and cons of shooting on 16mm. We came up with fifteen cons one pro of shooting on 16mm. The cons were that everything that could go wrong and the single pro was that it might look incredible and go really well with the feel of the project. After lying on the floor for ten minutes thinking about what to do, we made the decision to shoot on film. Partly because we knew that we would never be able to shoot on 16mm after we graduate, and mostly because we envisioned cherry blossoms on film with sunlight lingering in between the branches and we were sold.

 

         Because we decided to shoot on film, we really need plan what and how  we are going to shoot, and creating the perfect storyboard became crucial. We started storyboarding two weeks ago and it hasn’t been easy since neither of us are experienced artists. We met everyday last week to finish our storyboard and just finished it. The only thing that kept us going was the excitement that came with storyboarding. We couldn’t exactly translate what we have in mind on the page, but the process of coming up with compositions arguing over what kind of shot it should be and deciding how to transition from one scene to another was a lot of fun. At times, we got stuck on one shot for more than 30 minutes and got tired and frustrated, but there were also moments where we were ecstatic because we came up with a brilliant framing.  

         The fact that we still do not have the cast and the locations locked down is stressful, but I think Sue and I will figure it out some how. I still jokingly tell Sue that we should just give up every time something is not working with our film. Then Sue slaps my back and gives me mean looks and we start working again. I knew going in that it was going to be difficult and it hasn’t proven me wrong, but I find a delightful little joy in the process and this keeps me going and gets me excited to work again.

To Manifest the Vision (Nicola)

In honor of my last post, I’m going to go a slightly different direction than usual. Instead of examine a specific film, I’m going to go behind the scenes a little bit and discuss my personal experience with the medium.

You see, in addition to other classes, my course load this semester included not one, but two different film production courses, as well as a feature-length screenwriting class. I’ve spent the past few months lugging cameras, tripods, and light kits back and forth between the Digital Media Center and my apartment, sending emails to various TA’s and potential volunteers, and madly typing out words that I could only pray formed a coherent string of thought (or, at the very least, were eligible for some sort of nouveau interpretation). Between contorting myself into awkward positions to get just the right shot, audibly swearing at Premiere Pro, and bribing my four-year-old actress with hot chocolate (and extra whipped cream, of course), there were some fairly undignified moments. For that matter, there may or may not have been an excess of character casualties in my screenplay when I discovered, in the wee hours of the morning, exactly how much time remained before the 10am deadline.

But for all the emailing and flailing, stressing and obsessing, crying and sighing, I’m glad for the experience. Granted, with the power of retrospect, there are certain things I would have done a bit differently, but hindsight is 20/20, right?

The fact of the matter is, up until this semester, the visual medium was something from which I was removed. Yes, I’d taken film analysis courses and written short scripts, but I was still very much within the realm of words. When it came to the hands-on stuff – the actual making of the vision into reality – I remained on the periphery. And I was comfortable there. In fact, growing up in a household filled with incredibly gifted artists, I’d actively avoided the visual route in order to reduce stressful familial competition. I searched for my own realm of expertise – something I could excel at in my own right without being compared to my family members – which is how I came to love writing.

Writing is a powerful medium – it allows authors to insert characters, places, and worlds into other people’s minds without ever having to lift their fingers higher than a few centimeters off the keyboard. For us writers, the ordeal of creation takes place entirely inside our own heads (which isn’t to say it’s not a loud and bloody battle in there; they don’t say ‘kill your darlings’ for nothing), which means we have a certain amount of liberty when it comes to the realities of our world. If we require a dog to perform some miraculous feat of daring, or perhaps desire a slightly-too-convenient beam of moonlight to burst forth from behind the clouds, it's a quick matter of a tickety-tack-tack on our laptop. But writing something into existence and actually finding a way to bring it to life are two entirely different things. Depending on the film’s budget, it might even prove impossible. In my experience writing scripts, I’ve come to the conclusion that dealing with the strict parameters of reality requires writers to truly question their own work. The writer’s world is stripped of its rosy hue and she is confronted with a starker universe – a universe where plot holes and flaws in character logic are unable to hide behind passages of beautiful prose. Coming from a person who is chronically loquacious, I’d say such a limiting experience is a very important experience to have.

I was, I admit, a little overambitious with the amount of film courses I took on this semester, but due to the immersive nature of the experience, I got a chance to sample a broad variety of roles involved in producing a film. I learned so much – so much more than I ever thought I would – and I produced things that I never thought I was capable of. I’d never so much as picked up a T5i before this semester (let alone sat down with editing equipment), and previously, when people started talking about apertures and shutter speed, I would stop whatever I was doing and back away slowly. Yes, they’re student films, and yes, they’re short, and yes, there are a lot of aspects that could use improvement – but they’re mine. I’m coming away from this experience with a heightened knowledge of film and a definitive desire to grab the camera and shoot some more footage.

(Stills from NERVOSA)

 (Stills from Stolen Petals)

Well… maybe after a good long nap.

Before I sign off for good, I’ve assembled a short list of the things I’ve taken away from this experience that you might not find in a textbook.

1. When it comes to finding volunteers, diplomacy is key, but so are complimentary pastries, cookies, and coffee.
2. If you’re filming and you see something that looks cool – shoot it. Even if you don’t use it in your current project, you might glean some inspiration from it or find a place for it in a different piece further down the road. And if you don’t? Well, then you have some cool footage in your library.
3. B-roll footage will save your neck.
4. However long you think it will take to shoot something, multiply it by two.
5. Give yourself parameters. I often find that I’m more creative when my freedom is restricted because it forces me to use my ingenuity.
6. Try to divide your filming days so that you have an opportunity to start editing the first round of footage before going back and filming the next round. This will give you a good idea about whether or not there’s anything you should change or reshoot (note: there always is).
7. When your professor writes “FILM IS CHAOS” on the chalkboard in giant letters, he knows what he is talking about. Things will go wrong. This is okay.
8. Your ego is your enemy. Don’t be scared of criticism – learn from it.
9. Whether or not you're an anxious person, use whatever anxiety you have to your advantage. When you ask someone for feedback on your piece, remain in the room as they watch it. You’ll find that you, yourself, are more aware of certain issues depending on who the audience member is and what your subconscious thinks they will be most attentive to.

And last but not least:

10. Filmmaking is a collaborative experience. The amount of work that goes into producing a film – even a short one – is crazy. To make a film is to make something bigger than yourself – enjoy the experience and make some new friends while you’re at it!

Well, that’s about it for me! Thanks for a great semester!

The Great Gatsby: Understanding Baz Luhrmann’s Vision (Nicola)

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, has been a favorite of mine since the moment I picked it up my sophomore year of high school. Initially, I was drawn in by the story – an ill-fated romance founded on undying hope – and swept up by vivid images of flapper dresses, roaring parties, and a dashing protagonist who “always look[ed] so cool.” But as the class began to analyze Fitzgerald’s writing, I found myself in awe of the sheer amount of social commentary packed between the pages. This book was more than a romance – it cautioned against the dark side of the American dream, scoffed at rampant consumerism, juxtaposed man and machine, and reflected on the irreversibility of time in a society barreling forward at top speed.

 

When news emerged of a cinematic remake directed by Baz Luhrmann, let me tell you, I was very excited. And I wasn’t the only one. In the Spring of 2013, I saw large numbers of Gatsby-themed parties, an emergence of The Great Gatsby tote bags and t-shirts, and the haunting presence of iconic blue eyes staring at me from novel covers everywhere I went. Even classmates who had previously claimed to despise the novel seemed eager to attend the movie (though I strongly suspect this has something to do with the casting of Leonardo DeCaprio). Hearing all this, you might be surprised to learn that I actually never got down to seeing the film until quite recently. When the first film reviews started coming back, criticizing Luhrmann for his bastardization of the quintessential American novel and citing unnecessary, over-the-top theatrics, I decided against watching to avoid further disappointment. So it was with a critical eye that I finally sat down last week to watch Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.

 

There’s no way around it - cinematic adaptations are difficult. The director is faced with the Sisyphean task of pleasing a large and loyal fan base, where every individual who fancies himself an aficionado of the book has his own perception of what the ‘perfect’ adaptation should consist of. In such cases, it is advisable for the director to avoid a chapter-by-chapter, book-to-screen adaption at all costs, for such a procedure has the tendency to result in a ‘please all – please none’ scenario. In my opinion, the director’s time is best spent paying homage to the spirit of the novel, while retaining his own authority as an auteur. Whether or not you approve of the specifics of Baz Luhrmann’s execution, the effort spent capturing Fitzgerald’s bacchanal indulgences is undeniable.

 

An Australian director and screenwriter, Baz Luhrmann has a flair for the theatric (anyone who’s ever seen Moulin Rouge knows he’s a fan of glitz and glamor), but what Luhrmann truly excels at is taking what the audience has seen a million times and giving it back to them in a way that is extraordinary. As is the case with many ‘go big or go home’ directors, opinions on his work tend to be divided. In fact, reading through reviews of The Great Gatsby I found descriptions of Luhrmann ranging from “genius” to “philistine.” In looking at the, shall we say, less than auspicious reviews, it is impossible not to notice the similarities of their complaints. Critics repeatedly cite the over-the-top nature of the film as the over-indulgence of the director, but over-indulgence is what The Great Gatsby is all about. Wild music, constant movement, spatial and temporal discontinuity – all of it speaks to the New York City madhouse Fitzgerald describes in his books.

It’s true – Luhrmann takes a number of liberties in the film adaptation that Fitzgerald might never have considered (though I don’t think he would have disapproved of). Take, for instance, the soundtrack – a fusion of jazz and pop culture. The decision to incorporate contemporary music was not, as some say, a flagrant disregard of historical accuracy, but rather, an enhancement – a respectful nod to the music of the era, updated with a modern perspective. The jazz of the 1920’s was new and exciting; the exotic ‘street music’ was considered immoral among older generations and seen as a potential threat to traditional values. Jazz was the ‘cutting-edge’ music of the youth and Luhrmann’s decision to use pop culture musicians pays homage to the sensationalism of jazz. This is just one example of a director capturing the spirit and the feel of the novel rather than making a scene-by-scene translation. Luhrmann uses the tools provided by the medium of cinema to translate words on a page into a hyper-real world that envelops the viewer. The use of 3D and CGI embraces contemporary cinematic techniques, and the fast paced editing helps enforce the overwhelming forward motion that the narrator, Nick, claims to be swept up by. The vivid imagery and the bright colors ooze extravagance, making for an overwhelming experience. The entire thing is shot beautifully and, what’s more, it’s fun to watch. So if “overbearing” this is the worst people can say, then I believe Luhrmann hasn’t failed in the slightest.  What he has accomplished is a piece that purposely embraces the contemporary to an almost ludicrous degree as an extension of Fitzgerald’s own social commentary.

 

It would seem to me that those who dislike Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby, disapprove not because the film was poorly done (in fact, I would place it in the category of cinematically spectacular) but simply because they are not personally drawn to Luhrmann’s vision. While I perfectly understand why some might find the barrage of quick cuts, the overly saturated colors, and the frantic music overwhelming, these are critical characteristics of both the book and the director in question. Ultimately, I believe that in Luhrmann does two things: He stays true to the heart of the book and he remains true to himself as a director, and to that I raise my glass and say, “Thank you, Old Sport.”

 

 

Shultz Unchained: The Importance of Character Arc (Nicola)

SPOILER ALERT: this will reveal key components of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. If you have yet to see the movie, I highly suggest you stop reading.

I mean it. Stop.

…I bet when you were a kid you flipped to the back of all your picture books too – you ought to be ashamed of yourself. 

This is the face of shame.

I’m a big Quentin Tarantino fan. Even as I write this, I can practically hear my grandmother’s disapproving tsk from all the way across the Atlantic Ocean – but hey, that’s a Tarantino film for you. Tarantino will go where other directors fear to tread, and when he ‘goes there’ he goes there – and he won’t pull his punches either. I’ve always had this feeling that many of Tarantino’s most iconic scenes originated with the sentence, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if…?” and then he just goes does it like his big bad self. 

I was re-watching Django Unchained the other day, and in classic Tarantino style, it breaks all the rules. Historical accuracy? Forget it. Political Correctness? Don’t make me laugh. Breathtaking cinematography and total bad-assery? You know it! But while I admire Tarantino’s audacity as a director, he sometimes takes things a bit too far for my taste. In this case, I’m referring to the last twenty minutes or so of Django Unchained.

It’s not the presence of the violence I had an issue with (it is a Tarantino film, after all), but the inanity of it. The whole sequence has no more carnage than the infamous “Crazy 88” fight scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1 yet it seems uninspired in comparison – trite, even. After Shultz (Christopher Waltz) dies and Django (Jamie Foxx) is captured, the movie seems to unravel. But why? Well, that’s because the story line we were actually following has already ended. Yup. You heard me right. You can name the movie after Django, you can give Jamie Foxx all the coolest outfits and the most screen time, and heck – you can even give Christopher Waltz an academy award for Best Supporting Actor, but in the end, it's the endearing dentist-gone-bounty-hunter that claims the role of main character. Don’t believe me? All you have to do is take a look at the traditional aspects of character arc.

The Three (Or Four) Act Structure isn’t cinematic law, but it does compose a large percentage of the storylines we know and love. Whatever you call it – ‘The Hero’s Journey’, ‘The Basic Film Paradigm’, etc. – the essentials are the same: the main character’s ordinary world is established, an inciting incident calls that character to adventure, conflict is encountered, the stakes are raised, and once a crisis decision is made, the climax is reached and some form of resolution occurs. There’s some variation here and there, but in general, this is the natural progression of storytelling.

Now, try to apply this paradigm to Django Unchained operating under the assumption that Django is the main character. Doesn’t really work, does it? As a character, Django remains completely static. Very early on, the film establishes Django’s two goals to be ‘rescue and revenge.’ He is determined to free his wife, Broomhilda, and as far as Django is concerned, nothing save for death is going to get in his way. Django experiences no crisis decision because within the parameters of his established character, Broomhilda is paramount – no sacrifice is too great if it means getting closer to the objective.

Try the same exercise again, but this time with the assumption that King Shultz is the main character. The film establishes his ordinary world as a bounty hunter, and he simply conducts business as unusual until he hears about Django’s search for Broomhilda. With this, he is called to action for, as Shultz puts it, "When a German meets a real-life Siegfried, it's kind of a big deal." Throughout the course of the film, he struggles with moral conundrums as he pursues what he believes to be the right thing. Shultz’s story climaxes with his crisis decision (which, I might add, was a brilliant performance on both the part of Christopher Waltz and Leonardo DeCaprio) to forfeit his life and put an end to the atrocities of Candyland. Once Shultz dies, the central message of the film has been successfully conveyed and all that remains is some gratuitous violence. The subsequent blood bath seemed to prolong the movie unnecessarily.

It would seem that Waltz’s character is so wonderfully developed and well crafted that Django becomes one dimensional in comparison. The thing is, Tarantino is too good of a director and too good of a writer to accidentally switch the protagonists of his main plot and subplot. I’m pretty sure Tarantino knew exactly what he was doing with Django Unchained. He wanted to create a straight-up revenge film, but knew such a premise wouldn’t be rich enough to engage his audience, so he incorporated the character of Shultz to give the story dimension. Consequently, the movie’s conclusion is not so much the resolution of a storyline as it is twenty minutes of pure Tarantino indulgence

But, hey, that’s a Tarantino film for you.

 

On the Final Touches: Sound, Color & Goodbye (Andrea)

With Bernard Died picture-locked, there isn’t much more that I, as the director, need to do––aside from taking a look at everything to make sure it’s going okay. At the time of writing this, the premiere is still a week and a half away, so a lot of the final touches are still ongoing.

Music: Early on, since the inception of the project, Tony has had a composer in mind for our film. His name is Tim, and he is now a graduate of Peabody. Tony met him through their Sound on Film class a year ago, and I had worked with Tim through my job at Undergraduate Admissions. We’ve both really admired his work, and he’s really easygoing and talented. 

Will and I sent Tim a rough cut, and he came up with some ideas (namely, this song). We loved where he was going with it. We rode down to Peabody in early April to meet with him, and talk about the themes and major emotional shifts in the work. Form there, Tim’s been hard at work composing. Yesterday, we just received his first draft, and it’s almost perfect. It’s entirely composed of piano, and with a little tweaking, it will hit all of the right emotional notes in the film.

I never realized how important music could be to this piece. I almost feel as if I’m looking at the film on a new level. The music helps the pacing a ton and gives a lot of depth to it. I’m excited to finally get it where we want it.

Bernard, in the fish store.

Sound Mix: I can’t speak to this too much, since I haven’t heard it yet, but we sent over an .omf file to our sound mixer, Eddie, who also recorded sound on-location. He’s working on cleaning up the dialogue, adding room tone, adjusting levels and more. A really detailed sound mix can help make the space of the film more believable, and I hope that when we hear Eddie’s final mix, the film will sound more polished and professional.

Coloring: Our DP, Corey, has been tasked with the job of coloring the film––and that is mostly because he is the only person who has the coloring program we need, DaVinci Resolve. 

Coloring the film is really crucial. The raw footage rarely comes out of the camera as you’d like it to. With a really complicated program like DaVinci, you can fine-tune every highlight and hue in the frame. It’s essential, and you need a person with a very skilled and trained eye. So naturally, our DP would be perfect for the job. He hasn’t started on the color correction yet, but here is why we need it:

Orange. So orange it hurts.

Design: I have definitely overlooked this in the past, but I started thinking about it on my last film, when we had a great graphic designer do the title. Typeface and title design can really tie up the film nicely. You get one shot to showcase your title in the film, and it has to look good. A striking title can stick in your mind visually.

Will and I wrestled with where to put the title, and we ultimately decided to place it over black at the end of the film. My friend Alayna, a graphic design major at MICA, offered to do the design for us. She is currently thinking over some ideas, but will eventually come up with a concept for the title and typeface that we can use for the credits.

Premiere: This is all in preparation for our premiere, which will be held on Saturday, May 9th at 6:30pm in Shriver Hall on campus. I’ve been told it’s a fancy event, semiformal attire, with food and a reception to follow. Studio North has organized it, and we’ve sent out invites to our cast, crew, extras, locations, friends and more.

Gorgeous poster, designed by Ingrid Ma.

In a way, I don’t want the premiere to come. It’s admitting that this film that I’ve worked on for over a year is finally over; that my time at Hopkins has finally come to a close. Even writing this blog post means that I’m near the end, as this will be my last one. Goldfishes and funerals and shampoo bottles have been on my mind for so long, have been so integral to my senior year here, that it will be hard to let go. 

So as excited as I am for everyone to see this film––see where it has come from and where it will go––I am sad. I want to take the time here to thank everyone who has helped this film come to life. I’ve never made art this difficult in my life, but I am happy I did, because I have been challenged and pushed to the limit. And if nothing else, that’s what this experience has been for: mistakes, learning, and goldfish.

Signing off,
Andrea

On Post-Production: We'll Tell a New Story (Andrea)

I’m writing this at the very end of the editing process, which has been, in one word: slow.

I am one of those directors who prefers to shoot the film and then not look at it at least for a month or so. Once we wrapped in early February, we didn’t start the edit until later in the month. During that time, our assistant editor Josh synched the sound and audio for us, and put together a rough assembly of a couple of the scenes. We got it back from him in late February, and then began to slowly assemble the film.

This was largely a process that involved our editor, Will, staring at everything and changing things for hours on end, while I looked over his shoulder and offered some advice or voiced my preference for a take or performance, occasionally. We also took a trip down to our sound designer’s recording studio with Zach and recorded his voice-overs. We were often re-writing the script with him in the studio, determining what was easy enough or realistic for him to say.

A sneak-peek: Scene 4.

When we cut the film from start to finish, according to the script, it was thirteen minutes long. And it was a slow thirteen minutes, but we still felt pretty good about it. However, when we showed it to our professor John Mann, he criticized it pretty heavily. It was not a good film. It was long, with too many characters, plots, and confusing scenes. The script, as we had feared, was not working on-screen. However, as he assured us, it was “fixable,” and we could have something good if we worked hard on it.

One scene left relatively untouched. Sans color correction.

Cut to Will and me spending hours and hours in the DMC, editing and desperately trying to save our film. We were pessimistic that it would turn out to be anything worth showing. Our first decision was to create a new cut with the flashbacks in the film reduced to the absolute minimum. At eleven minutes, it still dragged, and we feared that it was no better than before. After showing the film to some friends, we decided it was best to get it down even further.

A beautiful, lost tracking shot.

One afternoon, we reduced the monologues in the chapel scene to silence. Voice-overs, all of the flashbacks (save the fish store), beloved tracking shots, entire character arcs: cut. At around seven and a half minutes, it was the strongest cut that we had. We also made a radical decision: the flashback to the fish store was no longer a flashback, but started the entire film. It was a good choice; the scene was beautiful to open with, and it followed chronologically in Ray’s timeline.

The problem? A majority of our actors and characters ended up on the cutting room floor. Uncle Nick, Uncle Diego, Mariana, Aunt Lis, and Uncle Phil were no longer characters––just featured extras with one line each, at the most. I still haven’t resolved how to tell them that they won’t be the characters they once were, and we feel incredibly guilty about it. However, I long ago resolved that for the sake of the art, we would have to do what was best for the film.

Uncle Nick's monologue: cut.

And here we are, today, April 17: our deadline for picture-locking the film. We’ve gotten it down to around five minutes and thirty seconds, with the help of our professors John Mann, Matt Porterfield, Roberto Busó-García, and many more students and friends. We have cut and recut the film so many times, and the only scene mainly left untouched is the last one, Scene 18. I’ll watch it one more time to make sure it works, but then it’s done; we can’t change anything anymore. And it’s up to everyone else to judge what it is like.

It is not the same film that it was one month ago. It is far from the film that it was when we shot it, unrecognizable from the script that we submitted to Studio North now a year ago. But it has gone from something that scared me to something that I can be proud of, after lots of hours and hard work (and Will’s editing talent, of course).

Next up: we send it to the sound designer, composer and colorist, with less than a month until Studio North’s premiere.

It’s okay to fix it in post,
Andrea

On Directing, Part 2: Last-Minute Rewrites (For the Better) (Andrea)

And so, production continued…

Day 4: Saturday, January 24
Location: JHU Levering Conference Room
Scenes: 7, 8
Characters: Ray, Mom, Uncle Nick, Aunt Lis, Uncle Phil, Uncle Elliott, Grandma
Crew Call: 10am; Cast Call: 11am

This day of production was easier from the start with two quick scenes. First, an argument between Aunt Lis and Grandma about her veil, and second, the actual wedding––a quick, thrown-together affair in a conference room during Lis’s lunch break. Production Designers Lauren and Danielle knew that they had to create an authentic wedding that looked at once hasty and rushed, but not lazy from a production standpoint. They bought Dollar Store supplies to dress the table and walls and used the whiteboard in the room to write “Just Married!”

Dave (Uncle Phil) as the groom, Todd (Uncle Nick) as the minister, and the great production design around them.

This was also the first time that we had a real, live fish in the film. Tony picked up Bernard and five “stunt doubles” at Petco. As production wore on, we realized each fish had a different personality, and unfortunately the one that we used this day wasn’t lively enough. Getting any close-ups of the fish was near impossible; he would only lie down at the bottom of the bowl. We switched to a different Bernard (by accident) the next day and stuck with him for rest of the shoot. Zach even took him home on the last day of production. 

Bernard, in his glamour shot. 

The best part of this scene, for me, was the costumes. Lis got to wear a white pantsuit, which we picked up at Marshall’s and kept the tags on to return later. Todd showed up with a fish-patterned tie, which fit the theme perfectly. Zach was dressed in an orange shirt and blue pants, which accidentally complemented Bernard’s own colors. Martha’s outfit, a lavender dress, became a motif in the film; we tried to put some lavender in each scene to hint that there was a little bit of Grandma everywhere.

Sue (Hair/Make-Up) does a tight bun for Salwa (Lis).

We had lots of time to relax, and took this day at a slow pace. We shot lots of b-roll and tried the wedding scene two ways, one with a comedic argument between Lis and Phil, and then a more silent take.

Day 5: Sunday, January 25
Location: JHU Center for Social Concern / Hamlyn Apartments
Scenes: 4, 1, 2
Characters: Ray, Mom, Uncle Nick, Uncle Diego, Secretary  + background
Crew Call: 8am; Cast Call: 9am

We knew going into this day that it was going to be another tough one. We scheduled a company move halfway through the day from the Center for Social Concern to an apartment north of campus. The office we were using was empty, and the apartment room was a mess. The production designers first had to set up the bare office to look like a real one, then run over to the apartment to begin clearing it out. I think I’m most proud of their work on the apartment––the pictures, trinkets and drawings in Ray’s “room” transformed it from a messy college student’s to a believable child’s. 

A sneak peek of some of the cool production design in Ray's room.

The morning passed without much incident. Scene 4 was a flashback to Uncle Diego’s office, where Ray plays a game and overhears a conversation between his uncles. We had hired a young actress, Hannah, who had auditioned for Lis. She seemed nervous and jumpy when talking to me, but lost that when the camera was on her. 

Zach (Ray) slates the shot with Jose (Uncle Diego) and Mina (2nd 2nd AD).

Our problems started in the afternoon. I sent our grips, Josh and Victor, home from set, thinking that the apartment was too small to fit them and we had a good handle on lighting. But the room was a little trickier than I had thought––there was only one window in the corner, and the area near the bed where we wanted to shoot was too dark. Kristen (2nd AD) and Brandon (AC) had to use LEDs and flags to brighten up the room, but getting it perfect took almost an hour after we got to the location, which was maddening.

Kristen (2nd AD), as our C-stand for the LED in the cramped bathroom scene.

This was also when Zach reached his peak of disagreeability. It was a long day, and he would constantly run offset or play games on his phone. When I would ask him to perform an action or sit up or get into place, he would completely ignore me. Will and Corey eventually had to start directing him too. At the end of the day, Zach wasn’t only just tired, but he was frustrated, messing up his lines so we would have to run take after take. When I thanked Zach after we wrapped, he brushed past me and slammed the door on the way of out the apartment. I don’t blame him for being tired, but I think that he was realizing that maybe set life wasn’t for him––or maybe I wasn’t the right director for him. 

Zach (Ray) also liked to stare down Bernard. They became real friends. 

Day 6: Saturday, January 31
Location: Car / Tropical Fish
Scenes: 10/11/12
Characters: Ray, Grandma
Crew Call: 8am; Cast Call: 9am

This was the last day of shooting, but when we pulled up to our first location, Tropical Fish, the door was locked and there was a sign: “Family emergency, sorry. Be back later.” We repeatedly called, knocked––nothing. Once our cast arrived, we knew that we had to do something; we couldn’t sit on the streets of East Baltimore without a plan. We drove back to my apartment on a whim, trying to figure out what to do on the way. 

Zach (Ray) in the backseat of the car, with his best friend Bernard.

We were filming Grandma’s flashback today, and the sequence was originally split into two scenes: one in the fish store and another in a car. As soon as we got to my apartment, Will and Tony started rewriting the script to cover the entire sequence in the car. We had also planned to get a plastic bag to hold Bernard from the pet store, but since that didn’t work out, we had to send Tony back out to Petco. And so, with some creative scheduling, we shot Martha’s lines first without Zach, waited for the plastic bag, then shot Zach’s lines. In the car, there was only room for Corey (DP) and Adriana (Sound Op), along with Martha as the driver, so I had to let Corey direct this one.

Corey (DP) and Martha (Grandma) in the car. Yes, we did manage to fit a tripod in the front seat.

After the last shot around 1pm, we managed to reach Tropical Fish on the phone. They were open again, so we drove over immediately. We made the decision to shoot the scene silent, in only two shots, because of time and also because the dialogue previously written for the fish store was covered in the car scene already. Shooting this scene silent was the best snap decision we made all day. The bubbles made great sound, and the scene worked better with a silent Grandma.

We took a group photo in Tropical Fish, after we completely wrapped for the entire production:

The last day's cast and crew.

Production for Bernard Died was exhausting, and seemed at times like it was impossible. But that all went away when we would see the footage at the end of each day. No matter the hardships we encountered, we always managed to make it look and sound and feel all right. The little-script-that-could was now a film.

(Also, a huge shout-out to our amazing set photographer Gillian, who took all of the photos in these last two blog posts. You can see more of them on our page, facebook.com/bernarddied.)

All the luck in production,
Andrea

On Directing, Part 1: When "One More Take" Became a Lie (Andrea)

It’s time to talk about the real stuff: the production. I think that the easiest way is to break it down by days. And so… 

Day 1: Saturday, January 17
Location: Lassahn Funeral Home
Scenes: 6, 3, 5
Characters: Ray, Mom, Uncle Nick, Uncle Diego, Mariana, Aunt Lis, Uncle Phil + background
Crew Call: 8am; Cast Call: 9am 

For the first day of production, I wanted to pick scenes that were low key to shoot for a couple reasons. The first was that it was Zach’s first day on a film set… ever. I was worried that if I worked him too hard, he may quit and not come back to finish the film. Also, second, my directing philosophy is to start off with the easy stuff and build up to the hard, more emotional scenes. Scene 6 was mostly a lot of blocking. During the scene, the family has an argument by their car as Ray buries his fish outside. The scene would be shot so that the focus was on Ray, with the family blurred in the background Scenes 3 and 5 were also fairly easy since they both were in the lobby of the funeral home, and the dialogue was short and quick.

Tony, Will and I drove to set in the morning, picking up all of our crew at 7:30am for the ride out to Kingsville, a half an hour away from Hopkins. As soon as I walked in the door, I faced my first crisis. Eddie, our sound mixer, had forgot a crucial XLR cable, and he lived an hour and a half away from Lassahn. He immediately took off to wait outside a nearby music store until it opened at 10am so he could buy a new one, which cost us money and time.

Me, directing Zach (Ray). No easy task.

When he got back, we shot Scene 6 smoothly. It was cold outside around 40 degrees, but this was our only exterior shot of the entire shoot. We only had to freeze for just a few hours and reminded everyone that this was the only outdoor scene, to boost morale. During this scene, Zach was surprisingly easy to work with and took my direction well. He was beginning to understand that sometimes we needed him to perform his actions and dialogue more than once when something was wrong with the camera, which we were learning he didn’t have the patience for.

Jose (Uncle Diego) and Dave (Uncle Phil), outside of the funeral home.

The rest of the family (Nick, Diego, Lis, Phil and Mom) was acting out an argument in the background of Zach’s action. This was by far the most complicated scene we blocked. Dave had to get out of a car, come around and hit his mark in time to say his lines. Jose and Salwa also needed to exit the funeral home and join the family in time for their lines too––all while staying visible to the camera. This also needed to be framed behind Zach, who was in-focus and took up a majority of the frame. Motion for the camera is different than in real life, since everything needs to look good for the frame. Thankfully, our actors were professionals and understood the importance of hitting their marks and cheating towards the camera, but it was something that I was still learning as I went through the scene.

Time for dead Bernard's close-up.

After we shot Scene 6, the lens adapter on our camera (the Digital Bolex D16) broke. We had to use pliers to rip it off so we could continue using the camera. This meant that we were restricted to only two lenses for the rest of the weekend, until Corey (DP) could order a new adapter over the week. It wasn’t awful, but it did limit the range of shots that we could shoot––factoring in the focus and depth of field.

The offending camera: the Digital Bolex D16.

We took a lunch break (lasagna and salad from Giovanna’s) and started on Scenes 3 and 5 in the afternoon. At this time, Tony had brought us the Film & Media Studies dolly: a large, cumbersome, orange nightmare that weighed a ton, but gave us some of the smoothest (and most cinematic) shots in the film. Corey (DP) and I both really wanted a slow push in on Zach to start Scene 3, which meant running the scene over and over again and coordinating blocking and performance all at once. This is when I began to notice that Zach was more antsy in the afternoon, after all of the food from lunch. He wouldn’t sit still and became difficult to work with.

Zach (Ray) liked pretending he was director, with Corey (DP) and Brandon (AC).

Scene 5 was the first time I had seen Fatima (Mariana) act, which was a huge risk. I hadn’t had the chance to work with her on her lines at all until we got to set, but she ended up performing them naturally.

One of the biggest mistakes we made on this day was our open call for extras. We called for them at 9am and 1pm, thinking we wouldn’t get any––as what typically happens when you try to get people to act all day unpaid in the background. But we didn’t expect for ten of them to show up, ready to be placed, when we only needed about four for the entire day. Thankfully, Will (1st AD) was great at keeping them happy throughout the day, with the promise of free food.

We wrapped Day 1 feeling really optimistic about the footage, the cast and the crew.

Day 2: Sunday, January 18
Location: Lassahn Funeral Home
Scenes: 15/16/17, 9/13
Characters: Ray, Mom, Uncle Nick, Uncle Diego, Mariana, Aunt Lis, Uncle Phil, Uncle Elliott + background
Crew Call & Cast Call: …it got messed up.

Yes. We were driving to Lassahn around 8am that morning in the rain. About two minutes away from the funeral home, a police car blocked Belair Road. Cars were detouring around, and we pulled over to the side of the road. Will, who had made it to Lasshan before us, called and said that there was black ice on the road, and he had seen a couple accidents. The police seemed to have decided to close off the road in the few minutes between our cars, and Tony and I, along with Eddie and his car of crew, couldn’t get to the funeral home.

With Corey directing me, we tried to take every possible detour, but police blocked them all off. On one road, we watched a car slide backwards downhill, completely out of control. We stopped off at a Starbucks around 9am, and I started calling all of our cast and crew, pushing the call time by two hours so that cast wouldn’t arrive until 11am. When Tony called me to tell me he had found a way to the funeral home, we got back in our car and followed a new detour, finally arriving at 10am to lots of applause.

The pushed call time presented us with a challenge: how to make up 2 hours of work and shooting. We had initially scheduled a pretty light day, overall; Scene 15/16/17 only had four shots, and Scenes 9 and 13 were the same setup as the bookends of a flashback. But Will, as the 1st AD, was stressed since his job was to keep us on time, and that meant the pressure was on Corey and me to make up the time. It would’ve been impossible to call off the day and reschedule, seeing as our actors were busy immediately after our scheduled shoot days. There was no room for flexibility, and we had no choice but to make up the lost time.

Using Julia (Script Supervisor) as a stand-in for our tracking shots.

Scenes 15/16/17 were condensed into one and consisted of two long tracking shots: one forwards––chasing Ray as he runs down the hallway––and one backwards––as he leaves the wake with Mom. The shot had to coordinate background action, dolly movement, and Ray’s speed. We must have done dozens of takes of each because something was wrong each time; either Zach looked at the camera, the dolly’s movement went out of control, or the focus was off. Of course, this also meant we were even more behind schedule, and also when Zach learned that when I told him we had to run the take “one more time,” it was a lie. We didn’t end up eating lunch until 3pm, and only had until 5pm when we lost daylight to make up the time.

The memorial to Grandma, made by our production designers.

As if the day could get worse after lunch, I also had my own problems to deal with: I’d been having chronic chest pains for a while, and they got so bad that I had to take a step back on directing. Scenes 9 and 13 passed in a blur for me, giving direction only when absolutely necessary and letting Corey and Will take the lead. We combined the two scenes––a simple conversation between Ray and Uncle Elliott––and shot them in one take, allowing for a short pause between the scenes as the camera rolled. This was our first scene with Jason, someone else I’d never worked with before that day, but he was a natural talent. The scene looked beautiful overall.

With Day 2 wrapped, we felt good, but a little shaken by the panic that morning. So we were prepared for anything that Day 3 threw at us.

Day 3: Monday, January 19
Location: Lassahn Funeral Home
Scene: 14, 18
Characters: Ray, Mom, Uncle Nick, Uncle Diego, Mariana, Aunt Lis, Uncle Phil, Uncle Elliott, Grandma + background
Crew Call: 8am; Cast Call: 9am 

On this day, we were already behind schedule before we even got there. That was because Scenes 14 and 18 were going to be ambitious to do in one day.

Scene 14 was scheduled to shoot first. For one, this was the scene for the monologues of Nick and Lis––aka the most emotional moments of the script––and it was going to take some time to get the performances right. Secondly, Scene 14 had a lot of background action, with a ton of actors placed in the chapel that had to act and move correctly every take. And thirdly, something we were majorly concerned about: around noon, there was going to be a viewing in the opposite side of the funeral home, and we were warned that music would be playing, which would interfere with our sound recording. We would need to record all major dialogue before that happened.

A nice photo of Tony (Writer/Producer) and Jason (Uncle Elliott).

Basically, we were set up to lose Scene 14 from the start. But I really owe it to Will, Corey, and our grips, Josh and Victor, for making the day run so efficiently. They were always one step ahead. The next shot would be composed and lit immediately after the previous broke down, and Will was always anticipating where background would be, directing their actions immediately and smoothly. This meant that all I had to worry about were the performances.

Me, directing things, and Corey (DP), shooting things.

At the beginning of the day, for Scene 14, Corey suggested that we shoot it handheld to reflect the shaky nature of the emotional content and also compensate for our lost wider lenses––even though I only initially wanted tripod throughout the entire film. I was hesitant, but then opened up to the idea. The mobility of Corey’s shoulder-mount gave us wider options of shots for the intensely complicated motion and composition of Scene 14, which was also the longest. 

By far the most difficult aspect of this day was directing the actors. As I mentioned, these were the toughest performances for the actors, and the most intense scene for the characters, as they all take turns saying goodbye to their mother. I didn’t want this goodbye to Grandma to be sentimental. This meant taming back the emotions to a realistic level, enough so that it wasn’t sappy. Because we were behind schedule, and almost every scene had Ray in it, this was a very long, very tiring day for Zach. He was sugared out (from the Coke that Tony gave him at lunch), exhausted, and not willing to work after half of the day. It was a struggle to even get him to stand in place, let alone act. Ironically, this is also when Zach gave one of his best performances of the film later on in Scene 18.

Salwa (Aunt Lis) and Dave (Uncle Phil) smile/stare for the camera.

Scene 14 was also when I realized that the background actors could be more of a hindrance than a help sometimes. One of the ladies, positioned behind Zach in one of our shots, kept looking at the camera and ruining our takes. Another young man, an “aspiring filmmaker,” kept bothering the crew and giving Will advice on how to run set. Another man approached me on my lunch break to snap about how much longer he was going to be on-set. One woman wanted travel reimbursement for the three hours she drove to our set. Again, this all could have been avoided by not using an open call for actors, but in total we had around twenty background for the day and filled the chapel entirely, for which I’m very grateful.

Zach (Ray) liked riding the dolly more than acting.

Scene 18 was spent playing catch-up and bargaining with Zach to get him to run more takes. Martha, who played Grandma, was perfectly content to lie in the coffin as long as it was necessary. Jason kept checking in on her and talking to her between takes to make sure she was okay, so my time and energy could be focused on persuading Zach to act. At some point in the day, Will took over coaxing him into acting since he had stopped listening to me. Three days straight of shooting for nine hours was getting to him, but thankfully we’d have a long break after this.

Martha (Grandma) takes a selfie in the casket. One of the more surreal moments on-set.

We finished the day feeling euphoric and thanking the owners of Lasshan, who had gratefully turned off the music for the viewing so we could shoot undisturbed. I am not exaggerating a bit when I say this film would not have happened if not for their generosity.

Full cast and crew photo!

Even though it was exhausting, the feeling of wrapping the three toughest days of production was amazing. This was the first time that the scenes I’d been thinking about for the past nine months were real, tangible things––things that had once only been abstract concepts, pictures in my head. It was thrilling to actually see them––see the tracking shots, Zach’s performances, the production design, the forty plus people making it happen, and even the fish in the shampoo bottle. This was what it felt like to see something in your head manifest itself in reality, almost magically.

Stay tuned for Days 4-6.

Sound, camera, slate, action,
Andrea

Richard Ayoade: a Director to Watch (Helena C.)

The first time I encountered Richard Ayoade was Christmas of 2010. I was watching a British comedy panel show, an embarrassing guilty pleasure of mine, and he was one of the guests. When the host asked him about his upcoming directorial debut Submarine (2010), I was a little shocked; his dry on-screen personality and quirky aesthetic (reminiscent of a high school history teacher) did not at all line up with what I thought a film director was “supposed to” be. Case in point, after discussing that the film, despite its title, has no actual submarines in it, one of the other guests asked “are you worried people will go hoping to see a submarine and go home disappointed?” to which Richard Ayoade rather impassively replied, “I’m worried that no one will go…regardless of their interest in naval policy.”

 

It is precisely this kind of dry and self-deprecating humor that made Ayoade an unlikely director in my mind. But after being thoroughly charmed by Submarine and his second feature, The Double (2014), released just last year, I think it’s safe to say that Ayoade is not just a serious young filmmaker, but also a solid one. There are some clear influences present—Wes Anderson and David Lynch to name just two—but the films really come to their own. Ayoade’s directing style feels distinctive, and the surreal tones and almost effortless deadpan offer a fresh and engaging take on familiar narratives.

* * *

Submarine is visually stunning and offers a good balance of dark comedy and drama. The bare bones of the narrative itself are not unheard of; a socially alienated young teen is put to the test against certain obstacles: having his first girlfriend and his parent’s troubled marriage. But the perspective of the main character, Oliver Tate, who sees himself as the star of his own biopic, allows for some wonderful visuals and comically self-aware camerawork. Yes, the clichés of an indie romance are present: running around a deserted urban landscape, setting bottle rockets on fire. But these montages of non-romantic romance are intentionally presented to us as Oliver’s distorted perspective of reality on grainy home film. Moreover, the use of color is fantastic, and Oliver’s inclinations to spy on people paired with the stark suburban setting make for some very beautiful shots. The highly stylized character’s perspective evokes a feeling of nostalgia, and we can’t help but want to buy into Oliver’s version of reality.

 

Oliver’s personality and his cringe-worthy adolescent egocentricity, which justify those moments of humorous self-awareness, drive the plot forward while avoiding being annoyingly angsty or quirky just for the sake of being so. Like the home movies that Oliver makes in his head, everyone in Submarine is charmingly imperfect. Oliver is by no means a hero, he constantly makes bad decisions out of fear: choosing to bully an overweight classmate for the sake of impressing Jordana Bevans, the mischievous girl he has a crush on, spying on his mother when he suspects she might be cheating on his father with their neighbor, and (spolier ahead!) deciding not to visit Jordana in the hospital after her mother has a dangerous operation. Oliver is complex, he’s a kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing. We as viewers are rooting for Oliver because we can identify with his problems, we were all once teenagers before; but something I personally found even more satisfying and engaging than Oliver’s imperfection is the complexity of the female characters.

Submarine not only avoids tropes like the manic pixie dream girl, but in fact denies them. Jordana is quirky, but she is not the energetic and “high on life” object of desire that brings meaning to the brooding male hero’s existence. Though Oliver frames her to be at first, he soon discovers that she is her own person; she has her own goals, her own problems independent of him. That is to say, that there are parts of Jordana that are not particularly desirable and she has just as much trouble as Oliver does in navigating the rough winds of adolescence. 

A vital part of this feeling of awkward youth is the soundtrack. Crafted specifically for this movie by Alex Turner, lead singer of the Artic Monkeys (Ayoade directed a number of their music videos), the lyrics are wistful and beautifully sung, appropriately reminiscent of the haze of youthful love and the melancholy of the break-up that follows. 

Submarine is a quality coming-of-age movie. The characters are intriguingly unique but not completely unrelatable. The visuals are surreal and beautiful. The film’s occasional heavy-handedness is well balanced by wry humor. Ayoade keeps things fresh, a difficult achievement in a widely explored genre that lends itself to many clichés and tropes. 

* * *

His second film, The Double,is equally as captivating as the first. It is more thematically complex and showcases the darker side of Ayoade’s aesthetic. The grimy urban environment and main character’s invisibility and surreal descent into madness call to mind Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. An adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1846 novella of the same title, The Double is the story of socially anxious clerk Simon James, whose life spirals out of control when he meets his confident and more popular doppelganger, James Simon.

Both played by Jesse Eisenberg, the characters are exact opposites in personality, and even more frustrating to the protagonist is that no one else around him seems to acknowledge that they even remotely look alike. The premise, tackles the idea that we oftentimes imagine a better version of ourselves. Simon James—shy, awkward, unable to make any impression on Hannah his workplace crush is a representation of how we are in reality; while James Simon—cool, confident, and irresistible to all women—is everything we wish to be. Eisenberg does a wonderful job portraying both characters, the meek and the aggressive, to the point where it’s not difficult to tell which character is on screen even though they look the same.

 

The absurdity of the situation is balanced out by the darkness of the world it is set in (the movie is shot almost entirely without natural light), we travel through the bleak landscape of Simon’s home, underground commute, and workplace without once seeing the sun. The alienating dark visuals and jarring cuts have a way of beating up the psyche of the viewer, which makes sense in light of the social alienation and disturbed psyche of the character. The environment seems to mirror Simon’s psychological state not just visually, but also sonically.

The sound in this film is carefully thought out. The sounds of the environment—the click-clack of typewriters, the rickety train tracks and subsequent screech of the brakes, the shrill ding of the elevator—adds an eerie aspect to the grimy feel one gets from the setting alone.

An industrial drone in addition to the visual play with light and shadows creates a truly immersing experience when watching the film. And despite the carefully crafted visuals and sounds, The Double is, for the most part, subtle in pursuing its themes. The comical darkness in the midst of absurdity is equally effortless.

* * *

The worlds of Ayoade’s films have a kind of dark ambience that can at times become suffocating for some (I, personally, really enjoy this ambience). But if you’re feeling a little melancholy and want to create an atmosphere for brooding thoughts, I cannot recommend these films enough. The dead-pan humor balances out the hard-hitting emotional moments, and the characters are fascinating; most importantly, the visual and aural landscapes that Ayoade creates are surreal and captivating, and I, for one, cannot wait to see what comes next from this up-and-coming director. 

On Casting: Why Smiling Matters (Andrea)

There are many directors who love the casting process. I am not one of them.

I know from the first time that an actor speaks whether he or she will fit the role, and it’s rare that I can be convinced to change my mind. The headshots and resumes are pointless to me, because I can remember the faces of those I liked, and I forget the ones I didn’t––but sometimes it’s a little trickier than that. Someone who looks the part can have an awful reading, or someone who reads perfectly can have a hard-to-work-with personality or schedule––all of which are deal-breakers. Although you do eventually end up with your cast, it is a bit like a puzzle. This is because you need your cast to not only act, but also to work together. And it can be hard to jam all those pieces together.

Going into casting Bernard Died, our main problem was that we had to cast a family. This meant that once we found our dream actor for the character of Ray, it would decide everything else about the rest of the cast––the race, look, likability. Tony and I put out calls for all ages and races to see what we got. We had two casting dates: October 4 and October 25, with callbacks on November 1. It was a cold read, which meant that we gave the script pages to the actors when they got to the audition. In all, we had 66 auditions, and 15 people were called back. We recorded our auditions so we could re-watch them later (also: where all the stills in this post come from!), and set up an email account ([email protected]) to communicate with the actors who RSVP'd.

The graphic we used in our casting calls, featuring Tony's real-life goldfish.

Out of the 66, many were bad, American Idol-style. One kid was too scared to audition and ended up crying in the corner of the room. Another had a laminated crab claw-shaped resume. Women as old as thirty came in to audition for a 15-year-old’s part. Another kid repetitively emailed us asking whether we were also casting for Teen Beach Movie 2. Really, nothing was off-limits.

But still there were many auditions that weren’t bad––that were actually really good. And those are the people we cast. Here’s a breakdown of how we ended up casting each of our characters, the good and the bad.

Ray Goby: As the main character of the film, Ray was the most important, casting-wise. We decided that whomever we casted for Ray would determine the rest of the family––race, hair color, everything. The fourth little boy that we saw on the morning of our first open call was Zach. He was dressed in an adorable button-down checkered shirt, with his hair combed to the side. When we explained that Ray’s character was somber and serious, his mom said, “You’re not like that, are you, Zackie?” and he shook his head and started to laugh. His happy personality, along with a good reading, convinced us that he could be Ray.

Just to be safe, we called back two other boys alongside Zach to read for us. One of the little boys looked the part, but his voice was deep and shy––and didn’t smile at us once. The other kid, we quickly learned, would be miserable to work with. He got up in the middle of the callback and starting running around the room, drawing on the chalkboards and “mooing” like a cow. He wouldn’t listen to even his father, who was yelling at him to come sit down. Unfortunately, Zach never showed up that day, and Tony and I started panicking that we hadn’t found our Ray yet.

The next day, I got a call from Zach’s mom saying that they were at the audition but nobody was there. It turned out that they had misread the date in my email. I ran down to the Mattin Center and auditioned Zach, and I am so glad that I did. He was everything we were looking for. He also smiled a lot.

Zach, in his hastily-arranged callback.

Mom: I remembered Kara from her emails leading up to the audition. She was courteous, used proper grammar (which is rarer in casting than you think it would be), and asked questions about her potential character so she could come prepared. She struck me as a mother when she walked in the room and, as I soon learned, she had a young son in real life. Kara gave a terrific reading––but what really impressed me was her attitude. She was the calmest and kindest person in callbacks, just like we pictured our Mom character.

Kara, in her first audition. She was always smiling.

Uncle Nick: Todd was one of the first men that we saw in the morning of our first audition, and Tony and I looked to each other after his reading and said, “That’s Uncle Nick.” He was clearly a seasoned actor, but he warned us that his schedule may not allow him to film with us––he was in a play for the rest of 2014 and wouldn’t be free until January. He was one of the reasons that we rearranged our shooting schedule, pushing everything back to January in the hopes that he would be able to act. He did.

Uncle Reish and Priya: These characters were a challenge. Reish and Priya needed to be related and, as written, they were Indian. After our auditions, we had only seen one Indian girl for Priya and none for Reish. On the second date of auditions, Jose walked in––another person who had been very invested in our project since he saw our call for actors––and we knew he was Reish after his reading. However, he was Hispanic, and we had only seen one Hispanic girl for Priya’s role––and when I offered her the part, she never got back to me. We couldn’t lose Jose just because of Priya’s character. Last minute, Tony found the roommate of one of his Hopkins friends named Fatima, who we never auditioned for the sake of time but turned out to be an excellent actress. (Also, the names of the characters were ultimately changed to Uncle Diego and Mariana.)

Jose, with his relaxed leather jacket and beanie. His attitude was very chill.

Aunt Lis and Uncle Phil: Although Lis’ character was a principal in the script and Phil was more secondary, what really convinced us that Salwa and Dave came together as a pair was their callback. We had all five family members in the room together, and the two invented their whole back-story for us as we got the camera rolling––about their wedding night, honeymoon, and martial issues. It was hilarious, with so much personality. Salwa’s monologue in her private callback also convinced us that she was easily the best candidate for Lis that we had seen all day.

The family in callbacks: Todd, Dave, Salwa, Kara and Jose.

Grandma: Martha was a SAG-actress that I had picked out from our email exchanges from the start––courteous and invested in the script. She gave a very strong initial audition, and during our callbacks, she also worked well with our young Rays––which was a big factor for us, since Grandma’s character needed to have a good connection with the lead. In reality, we were torn between her and another actress, but when I gave the other actress direction, she butchered the performance. By default, the part went to Martha, and I’m glad that it did.

Martha, giving an animated first reading.

Uncle Elliott: Casting this character was a bit of a nightmare. After going through auditions and callbacks, we still hadn’t seen anyone we would like to consider for Elliott’s role. It was getting close to production in January when we casted another SAG-actor. The Tuesday before the first shoot day on Saturday, he was called in for acting on the TV show TURN on our most important shoot day, so I had to fire him. I spoke with another actor on Wednesday, who promised me he could fill the role, but I woke up to an email on Thursday saying he would also have to cancel. In a last-ditch effort, I called up a Hopkins friend named Jason who was flying back from Los Angeles on our first shoot day, and he agreed to play the part. We rearranged our shooting schedule a bit to fit him in, and he ended up being one of the best casting choices we made––even though also one of the most stressful.

It may seem like I loved every actor and had no regrets in my casting decisions––because it’s true. They learned from each other, taught me things about directing, formed friendships, and were a lot of fun to work with on-set––always surprising me with their kindness, patience and ability. Most of all, they really did become a big family at the end, just like their characters.

So, I guess I’m glad I sat through 66 auditions to get to the couple that mattered.

All the luck in casting,
Andrea

The Wonderful Worlds of Wes Anderson (Madison)

The first film I ever fell in love with was Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. I was sixteen the summer it premiered, and watched it in a small-town movie theater in upstate New York with my cousin. The theater had been built in 1926 and hadn't grown much since then; it was small, with a screen the size of two king-sized sheets and seats upholstered in red velvet. The movie was shown on 35mm film. This was the best possible place to be introduced to a director, producer, and screenwriter with as many small quirks and fascinations as Wes Anderson.

 

Those who are familiar with Anderson's work will understand my feeling that his films are as exquisitely crafted and delicious as the confections he features in his 2014 film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. They are sweet, beautiful, and complicated; such that you enjoy them the first time you see them and then crave them again and again. 

 

In preparing for this post, I've tried to watch all of the feature length films Anderson has written and directed (with the exception of Bottle Rocket, his first film from 1996.) The list is as follows: Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Although ranking these offerings seems as unfair as trying to pick favorites among a group of best friends, I want, here, to rate Wes Anderson's films from “Must Be Watched” to “See it if You’re a Fan.”

But before I do, let’s take a moment to talk about what makes Anderson’s films so incredible and distinctive.  Although Wes Anderson often works with collaborators and cowriters, he has written, directed, and produced every single work I’ve included in this post; the final product, then, always has a couple of features that smack of Wes (warning, spoilers ahead!)

***

Anderson enjoys examining transient spaces: in particular, he seems to have a fascination with trains and hotels. In Fantastic Mr. Fox, Ash and Kristofferson bond over a toy train; in The Darjeeling Limited, Jack Whitman often wears a Hotel Chevalier robe when he’s aboard the train (a two-for-one!); in The Royal Tenenbaums, Royal Tenenbaum lives in a hotel for several years and eventually becomes its elevator attendant; Bill Murray’s character in Rushmore is similarly exiled to a hotel when his marriage dissolves.

 

Settings such as these are metaphorically fraught: does the train break down? Does the hotel make it through the war intact? Can this man pay for his room, and will someone help him if he can’t? The answers to these questions have as much to do with the internal state of a character as with any literal corresponding event.

 

When you put broken people in settings that aren’t quite anywhere, you put them in a space to move, either towards resolution or destruction. These settings, then, not only reflect the unresolved nature of Anderson’s characters (who are often sad, lonely adults striving for connection, be it with family or lovers), but also push them to extremes. Darjeeling Limited, for example, goes one step beyond trying to reunite three estranged brothers; Wes Anderson does not ask, what would happen if they met up for lunch? He asks, what would happen if they all lived in one small room on a train, in a country where they did not speak the language, for several weeks? Spaces like this, trains and hotel rooms, accelerate the plot, in that they naturally lead to something else: no character that lives in a hotel simply stays there and enjoys their visit; no train embarks without a destination. These spaces are close and temporary, a powder keg that the unstable character wanders into holding a lit match.  

In the vein of explosions, I’d like to point out another facet of Anderson’s brilliance as a storyteller: Anderson, for all of the beauty and levity his work presents, never lets the viewer forget what is at stake, what is at risk, and what is in danger of being lost. His films often feature an animal companion; typically, these animals don’t live to see the second half of the film.

 

Remember Snoopy, the khaki scouts’ dog, shot through the neck in Moonrise Kingdom; Deputy Kovac’s beloved Persian cat thrown out a window in The Grand Budapest Hotel; poor Buckley in The Royal Tenenbaums, struck dead by an intoxicated Eli Cash. And if Wes chooses not to sacrifice an animal on screen, he populates his stories with dead mothers and husbands (as in Rushmore), or kills off a character (such as Ned Plimpton in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou or the cider obsessed rat in Fantastic Mr. Fox.)

Although what we are seeing on screen may be bright, filled with primary colors and quirky furniture sets, there is a darkness lurking very near to the surface. The viewer is not spared the gory realities, particularly in Anderson’s latest work: we see Snoopy bloodied on an arrow in Moonrise Kingdom, and in The Grand Budapest Hotel are treated to a view of a woman’s severed head. These gruesome moments remind us that in these films everything is at stake. The chance to reunite with a family member, to preserve a dying world of elegance, or to be with the person you love is not only that; it is a chance to live, and to make living worth something. Above all, these films are about lost people trying to come together and connect; the fear of death and of dying alone or forgotten drives these characters forward and towards each other. Forging and testing relationships, then, does have life and death consequences.

Anderson often makes the decision to emphasize the physicality of his characters, for similar reasons. When we see Peter’s long pale legs sticking out of his boxers in Darjeeling, or a flash of Laura Bishop’s breasts as she washes her hair in Moonrise Kingdom we are reminded that these characters are vulnerable and mortal.

 

Of course, Anderson does not rely solely on nudity to help the viewer see a character as a body: the subdued performances of many of his characters (the straight faced Suzy Bishop, for example) and the minimal style of dialogue focuses our attention on the actors as people with bodies; we see their clothes, their hair, their heavy eye makeup as clues to their interiors. Everything that we see tells us about the character. Wes Anderson is nothing if not an expert at visual storytelling.

This brings me to what most people associate with Mr. Anderson’s films: bright, beautiful colors and exquisite set design. He fills his worlds with fantastic, quirky objects (the mounted head of a javelina, a pair of antique binoculars, a pendant with two blue keys printed on it) so that his stories become rich visual experiences. He plays with balance, using close up camera shots to establish symmetry; but then, you notice, the character he has focused on has one black eye, and the balance that was so carefully established is violated. Anderson gives us a tight shot of a girl’s face as she reads a book aloud, and then zooms out until the scene is a diorama with improbable paper dolls in place of the actors. One never quite knows what to expect when watching Anderson’s films; one only knows that it will be beautiful and unusual, and that one will want their wedding to look exactly like it. 

 

Another vital part of this visual experience is the quiet focus on scene and setting; each film is set in a different world, and Anderson makes sure to show to viewer every inch of it. We see the pink mountains of Zubrowka, the expansive forests of New Penzance, the multi-storied Tenenbaum house on Archer Avenue; the setting is so vital to the film that it comes close to being a character itself. These places are so believable, while at the same time being ever so slightly off, that one feels as if the worlds of Anderson’s films are just like ours, except that there, the whimsical and improbable can and will happen. The faux historical aspects of these places help us believe in the worlds just as we suspend our disbelief over what happens in them.

I will quickly mention (as I am running out of room) the meta-fictive aspect of many of Anderson’s films: often there is a narrator, a play within the film, or a sectioning of the film into parts or chapters. We are reminded, in watching them, of our favorite books, the ones we read over and over as children until the pages were stained with thumbprints and the corners had been torn.

 

As I’ve reached my 1500 word limit, I must present to you my ranking of Anderson’s films, and leave the discussion of music in his film for another time. Here it is, then, a list of Anderson’s films in order from “Must Be Watched” to “See it if You’re a Fan”:

1. The Royal Tenenbaums

2. Moonrise Kingdom

3. The Grand Budapest Hotel

4. Fantastic Mr. Fox

5. The Darjeeling Limited

6. Rushmore

7. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

***

“For my dearest darling, treasured, cherished [Wes], whom I worship. With respect, adoration, admiration, kisses, gratitude, best wishes, and love from [M] to [W].”

Zero’s letter, slightly changed, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

 

On the Script: How "Untitled Goldfish Funeral Script" Became "Bernard Died" (Andrea)

I’ve heard it again and again: when you make a film, you have to start with a good script, or else it doesn’t matter how great your director or producer or director of photography or editor is. The film just won’t work.

I know that I want to be involved in filmmaking in some way, but I found out early on at Hopkins that screenwriting wasn’t my strong suit. So when the grants for the new student-run production company Studio North were announced last April, I teamed up with senior Tony Lee––who could write, who was a good friend, and whose work I admired. I told him I would direct a script if he wrote it, and that’s how Bernard Died began.

Tony sent me four short stories he had written, and I picked the one I liked best. It was a 10-page prose piece on a nine-year-old boy named Ray Goby who didn’t want to flush his dead goldfish down the toilet on the day of his grandmother’s funeral. It had multiple flashbacks, dozens of main characters (all family members), and had a unique child’s perspective. Plot aside, the story seemed like a logistical nightmare to produce, but I couldn’t stop visualizing the narrative of a young boy reasoning with death alongside his quirky modern family.

When we started to work on the lovingly titled Untitled Goldfish Funeral Script, I learned that writing an adaptation of a short story is tough. For one, something inherent to prose is the voice, which is difficult to translate visually. We chose to keep Ray’s point-of-view by writing voice-overs, which also solved the problem of the complicated characters and situations. Another difference is the scope. Prose has no limit; scripts, on the other hand, do. Scripts are meant to be produced, to turn into material work. They can’t have that same unrestrained quality of prose––or they can, but with a slim chance of being produced without a lot of money.

We felt so accomplished when we finally finished writing that I thought that once we sent our script to Studio North, pitched it, and got the grant, our screenwriting was over. Far from it. Over the course of the next nine months, we revised countless drafts, even on-set and in post-production. One night in November, Tony, Will (our producer/1st AD), Corey (our DP) and I stayed up late workshopping our script in a true “writer’s room” fashion. We all stood up and screamed at each other at one point, wondering why no one agreed with our ideas. The script went from seventeen pages to ten; from eleven main characters to nine; from dozens of scenes down to just eighteen. It was tough to receive criticism, but that criticism helped turn it into what it is today.

Most of our revisions when we neared production were focused on the logistical aspects of producing the script. When working on a low budget student film, there isn’t money to buy a casket or funeral flowers; no way to pay actors; impossible to fake a school carnival. In a way, the production itself influenced the script, and the limits became its aesthetic. Since we already knew we couldn’t shoot a summer outdoor wedding scene in the middle of January, it was best to change the location and motivation of the scene sooner rather than later. We found ourselves inspired by the props found in thrift stores, the wardrobe that our actors brought to set, the small locations owned by Maryland families, and the personalities and touches that our actors gave their characters.

In the end, what makes all of the revisions and late nights and stress worth it is when this line:

...becomes this opening frame from the film:

Over the next couple of months, I hope to share all of the ups and downs of the little-short-film-that-could, Bernard Died (or, as we still call it, the Untitled Goldfish Funeral Script).

Until next time,
Andrea

Charlie Kaufman and the Artist’s Mind (Josh)

    One of the wonders of cinema is the potential to reach inside the human psyche and explore the nature of the mind itself.  A master of exploring the complexity of the human mind is Charlie Kaufman, an acclaimed screenwriter and director, who has written such films as Spike Jonzes', Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, as well as Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Then in 2008 Charlie Kaufman wrote and directed his ambitious masterpiece, Synecdoche, New York.   Kaufman’s films, like Adaptation and Synecdoche New York, like to explore the internal mechanisms of his protagonist’s thoughts and fears.  His movies use the tools of cinema to replicate the complexity of his character’s ambitions, feelings, and desires.

    Adaptation is a film whose very concept gives the viewer a glimpse into its own creation.   Charlie Kaufman even goes so far as to give his fictional brother Donald, a character in the movie who becomes a writer, screenwriting credit in the film.  The protagonist of Adaptation is Charlie Kaufman who is attempting to adapt the memoir The Orchid Thief into a motion picture.  Throughout the film, Spike Jonze and Kaufman employ techniques to make the viewer aware of the internal struggle of the writer’s mind.  Kaufman speaks in voiceover to himself repeatedly throughout the film, beginning the story questioning whether he is even capable of any original thought whatsoever. The screenplay describes the story structure of the script as it continues.  The visual style alternates between the dreary life inside Kaufman’s apartment and the lush, saturated adventure film that the protagonist ultimately writes.  Kaufman writes in an identical twin character named Donald, the visual representation of the writer’s inner turmoil about the attempt to create unique ideas within a strict set of traditional standards.  Donald’s character represents the desire of any artist to be original and interesting, while at the same time, constantly fighting against the constrictions of what is expected of them by mass tastes.  Donald’s desire is to write a film that is almost completely formula and written in mainstream Hollywood style.  Kaufman illustrates this tension later in the film during a scene set at a screenplay conference taught by Robert McKee, the famous teacher responsible for many storytelling conventions.  Mckee berates Kaufman for having the audacity to believe that nothing happens in the world and a story should reflect that fact.  Unfortunately, the quote is a bit too obscene to print on the blog, but to sum up McKee’s response, he counters by describing the turmoils of people all over the world that happen constantly.  He accuses Kaufman of making nothing worthy of the audience’s time if he believes that nothing really happens in life.  Adaptation describes the thought processes of a creator trying to find the proper balance between his desire for originality and the trappings of appealing to an audience.

    Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, Synecdoche New York functions as a visual representation of a character that desperately wants to find and create the truth about his own humanity,  but is unable to get out of his own head and realize the changes in the world around him. Kaufman begins the film with what appears at first glance like a single ordinary morning, but in the span of minutes, he moves the chronology across several months.  When the protagonist, Caden Cotard lifts up a newspaper, the date reads September.  A moment later, the television references a date in October, and the newspaper references a date in December.  Caden is experiencing life disappear right before his eyes and he, like a viewer not paying close attention to the details, does not notice.  He is a playwright, making art that takes years of work, but that does not seem to offer him fulfillment and in no way impresses his wife.  Caden sees various doctors for an illness that consistently rots his body from the inside.  Kaufman includes new symptoms continually throughout the many years of the chronology of the film.  They often appear ghastly at first, but then they become a normal part of the mise-en-scene.  Caden’s wife leaves him to go on vacation in Berlin, which quickly becomes permanent.  He, of course, does not notice this fact, believing it has been only a few weeks, at most.  After Caden receives a Genius Grant, giving him practically unlimited money to accomplish any goal he so desires, he finally feels ready to construct his masterpiece, constructing a replication of the reality of his world in a massive warehouse in New York.  Kaufman constructs a visual representation of a New York that constantly expands, growing increasingly elaborate and bizarre.  The play has so many layers of reality that Caden gets lost in the world.  Meanwhile, the world outside is becoming a dystopian nightmare, but no one working on the play seems to notice or care.  Kaufman includes these images only in the background of frames, never focusing on any of the turmoil in the world outside of the creation of the play.  The characters are stuck because of the the prisons of their own mind, desperately trying to create something worth remembering, but never getting there.  Human beings, according to Synecdoche New York, try desperately to make their existence matter, but most of them are end up getting trapped in their own heads and fail, always grasping, but never reaching.

    One important note about both these films by Charlie Kaufman, is that the worlds he creates are not miserable.  While he constructs universes that represent our fears and insecurities, he does so in his own darkly comic manner.  His work identifies that life is absurd, and there is always some level of black humor in that fact.  For instance, Synecdoche New York, features a character that spends the majority of her life living inside a house that is constantly on fire.  The fire is a symbol for the lack of control human beings have when approaching death.  Still, the motif is played for the absurdity.  It is meaningful but profoundly funny. Kaufman’s characters represent the inner desires that are nearly universal, but do in a way that is consistently complex, fascinating, unique, and humorous.

Colors and Visuals in Catching Fire (Elizabeth)

    The Hunger Games series is generally not subtle when it comes to its symbolism. It satirizes celebrity culture and the glorification of violence in the media by pushing it to its logical extreme, with even the name of the country, “Panem,” referring to the old Roman phrase meaning “bread and circuses.” Everything the people see on television is a lie designed to make them easier to control, and every person onscreen is being controlled and manipulated. When Francis Lawrence took over directing for the franchise with Catching Fire, he chose to weave this satire into every shot with his formal choices, including some very specific and consistent color symbolism.

    The colors of the film are strongly and consistently symbolic. For the most part, the palette is muted. Especially in the poor, oppressed District 12, dull grays and blacks and washed out blues are the norm. By contrast, the corrupt, decadent Capitol is full of garish, striking, ever-changing colors. The exception is a pure, bright white, which serves to illustrate the violence and authority of the Capitol. The evil president, meaningfully named Snow, always wears and distributes white roses. These roses turn up whenever the Capitol makes a move against Katniss and her allies, such as subtly decorating the edges of the chariot as she and Peeta ride to their second Games. The peacekeepers, the oppressive and violent police force, wear white—there is even a scene where the lax local officers, who wear grey under their uniforms, are arrested and replaced with vicious Capitol newcomers wearing only white. And, of course, there is the scene where Katniss burns away a white wedding dress to reveal a gray mockingjay gown underneath, revealing her rebellion to the world.

    Other colors carry other layers of significance. Purple always occurs when a Capitol character is making a show of power and waste, notably the president’s tacky purple house where he holds lavish galas full of powerful citizens. There, Peeta is offered a purple drink to make him vomit so that he can eat more. Purple is the color of the suits and dyed hair of the Games announcers as they make sending subjects to die into a fun spectacle. Effie plans for gold to be the color of team solidarity, but it is instead present whenever Katniss is manipulated by her allies, with Haymitch’s gold bangle as the proof that he made plans with Finnick behind her back and Peeta hiding family photos in his gold locket to try to get Katniss to abandon him. Orange, the innocent Peeta’s favorite color, finds its way into the story via the titular fire that symbolically burns away the old regime and the history of oppression. It is the color most closely associated with Katniss’s personal strength and her own ways of rebelling, whether with her dresses or the burning remains of the arena after she destroys it.

    Color is not the only prominent stylistic choice that Lawrence makes—his quick, sudden cuts emphasize Katniss’s lack of control and he illustrates the censored, artificial nature of the Games’ world by having Johanna’s swears bleeped out, and he wisely ditched the distracting shaky cam of the first film which activated at the merest hint of violence to give the viewer a more direct and brutal look at the action. The visual is a strong theme in the movie, from the benevolent painting ability of Peeta to the many manipulations of the Games and the propaganda on camera. By giving his colors such a strong visual coding, Lawrence embraces the artifice that the film so criticizes and gives the viewer the tools to recognize it for what it is. The viewer must learn to see the artificiality and hidden meanings in the films for himself, lest he be caught and deceived in the same manner as the people of Panem.

In Defense of Failures (Josh)

    With the advent of websites such as “metacritic” and “rottentomatoes,” film criticism could arguably appear as a quantitative science rather than evaluation of art.  Potential film viewers can log onto a site, see a number that determines the quality of the film and then make their decisions accordingly.  This system may prove convenient, but films are a complicated art form, and reducing them to simply good or bad does neglect a number of factors.  I want to profile two films that, according to Rottentomatoes are “rotten,” and explore them beyond a number representing a feailture to include the aspects that may make them worthwhile cinematic experiences.  These two films are Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here and Jason Reitman’s Men, Women, and Children.

    Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here is a coming of age story about a man in his mid 30’s struggling to come to terms with the responsibilities and realities of adulthood and family overpowering his dreams and desires.  The film begins with beautiful shots of light pouring in through the trees as the protagonist, Aidan Bloom, narrates one of the only non diegetic pieces of dialogue in a film, the story of him and his brother who dreamed as children to one day become heroes, only to end up realizing that this desire may always be a dream.  The shots continue as a fantasy sequence where Aidan and a robot follower run and battle crime.  As they turn around, they see his son asking for the password to their iPad.  This snaps him back into reality, at he breakfast table with his demanding children insistent that he put a dollar in the swear jar because of his cursing.  This sequence of images provides details of a man whose mind and body are in completely different places.  His wife must act as the adult figure within the household. When his wife finally confronts the protagonist, Aidan, about this, Braff’s film frames this conversation with an old carnival off in the distance. The image the viewer sees is of two adults sitting near a beach in a spot one would expect of teenagers. These young parents have matured into an age where responsibilities must now dictate their lives.  Aidan is a struggling actor necessitating his wife, Sarah, to work a miserable office job she hates because as she states, if she stops, their kids don’t eat.  Sarah must finally ask him when their lives became all about him and his dreams. As Aidan snaps into his realization, Braff moves his camera close, taking the characters out of the carnival.  The realities of his life make living for dreams a threat to one’s family.  Shortly after, Aidan receives a pamphlet instructing him on how to handle his father’s funeral.  The disconnect between the fantasies of youth and the disillusionment of adulthood continues in a sequence when Aidan takes his children on a “field trip” to a beautiful spot in the California desert.  As he attemps to explain the location as the site of his most recent life saving epiphany, the children only look at him with bewilderment.  The sound is full of wind and the sun disappears quickly in the scene.  Braff through the non-verbal filmic elements of light and sound brilliantly illustrates a character experiencing disillusionment.  A single epiphany will not save his life anymore, it will take true work. Wish I Was Here is not a perfect film and it certainly has missteps.  For instance, characters far too often nod in a solemn fashion after Braff’s screenplay makes a character state a self-aware profundity.  At other times, the camera lingers on character’s faces in order to remind the audience of the emotional impact of a particular scene.  Despite these flaws, Braff’s film at its core is a beautiful and moving story that represents largely realized ambition by the director.

    Jason Reitman’s Men, Women, and Children tells the story of how human beings interact with each other and face their problems in the era of modern communication technology and social media.  At first glance, it may appear to condemn and blame social media for society’s ills.  Because of this, it could therefore elicit easy criticism as a film made by an out of touch Baby Boomer, but a careful viewing of the film will unearth a much more profound message.  Social media and technology are tools that the characters use to try to solve their problems.  It provides them with an illusion of an escape but sadly for them, an ultimately ineffective avoidance mechanism.  Reitman shows this world with images such as an overhead shot of a high school hallway.  This image is of all the students on their phones, bumping into each other, and entirely oblivious of their surroundings.  Reitman presents an omniscient view of their online interactions, the worlds into which they have all escaped. Another scene features three cheerleaders talking while two of them send text messages back and forth gossiping about the third.  One may look at these sequences and see a condemnation of texting, but that is too simplistic of a view.  The overhead shot does not dwell on the phone, but on the gaps between characters.  The students in the school have no connection to one another other. Instead of seeking meaningful relationships with their fellow students, they instead turn to their phones.  One scene with a group of cheerleaders reflects teenage gossiping behavior, albeit in a way that reflects the times of the film.  Another two characters in the film are in a failing marriage and both turn to online sources in order to fulfill their lives.  One seeks an affair on an online cheating website, and the other seeks out an online escort.  Reitman never frames these scenes as the Internet being a cause; rather he has scenes of the characters unable to express themselves to each other.  When the characters must finally talk to each other and admit their wrongdoing, they both mutually decide that they should ignore the problem and instead focus on what they each want on their respective omelets.   Reitman uses a visual technique whereby when a character is immersed in their social media of choice, the world around them becomes that website or videogame.  The characters in this film must plug in to a different reality to escape their own dissatisfaction.  Men, Women, and Children like, Wish I Was Here does have some disappointing elements.  The film has a frustrating voiceover narration that tries to poetically connect the space satellite voyager with the situations of the character.  Unfortunately, Reitman does choose to have a narrator explicitly state the connections during numerous points throughout the film. He does this both in a montage showing the space shuttle voyager leaving our galaxy as the voice explains the event as a direct metaphor to the characters in the film, as well as a technique where he has the narrator speak over the film to explain motivations and backstory. It is an example of a screenplay telling rather than showing, and is by far the weakest element of the film. 

    Neither Wish I Was Here nor Men, Women, and Children are perfect films, but they are ambitious and have the intention on making a statement on modern day American society.  They have complex and well thought out characters and are careful to use filmic language to convey their themes.  Yes, they have flaws in their storytelling.  No film is perfect however, and both Braff and Reitman have made powerful dramas that do have a lot to say on the human condition.

Tanner '88 (Taylor)

   

 

 I’m going to assume that most of the people reading this haven’t watched or heard of Tanner ‘88. I hadn’t heard of it myself before doing research for this blog. So my goal with this post is to convince you in no uncertain terms to WATCH TANNER 88. Right now. Or as soon as possible. Or over summer vacation. Or whenever you can get your hands on a Hulu Plus account.

    Tanner ’88 is a one season political mockumentary directed by Robert Altman. First broadcast by HBO during the early stages of the 1988 U.S. presidential election, it goes on the campaign trail with former Michigan U.S. representative Jack Tanner, during his bid to secure the Democratic party’s nomination for President of the United States.

    Tanner is an unknown liberal Democrat who struggles to find a voice and make a name for himself during the early stages of the democratic primaries, until his campaign manager, T.J. Cavanaugh, uses an unscripted but passionate hotel-room speech caught on camera to produce an advertising campaign focusing on Tanner’s authenticity. After the success of the ads, which use the slogan, “For Real,” Tanner takes the lead in the polls and begins competing with two high profile, (real life) candidates: Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis.

    So what is it exactly that makes Tanner ’88 amazing? For one thing, it provides striking commentary about the artificiality of modern political campaigns, and the truly backbreaking effort involved in taking an obscure politician from low-level public figure to 1600 Penn. For another thing, it’s hilarious.

    Tanner is marketed as an honest, authentic, “what you see is what you get” candidate. His campaign slogan, “For Real,” is slapped on posters, stickers and television ads. However, viewers also get to see all of the focus groups, image consultations, and strategy work that are meant to shape him into a candidate that could actually get elected. Midway through the series, Tanner wearily says, “I feel like I’m becoming an innocent bystander in my own campaign.”

    The show also refreshingly depicts something that isn’t typically covered on television: the political campaign. This might at first seem like dull subject matter, but in the unglamorous, bus-touring world of primary elections, you really get a glimpse into the heart of politics. Because at this stage in the game, the work isn’t always fun and odds are that a candidate is not going to win. Every single campaign is a bootstrap operation and a level playing field at the beginning, with both seasoned politicos and still-green unknowns traveling all over the country, trying to get a leg up on the competition.

    Furthermore, with its faux-documentary style, Tanner 88 really gets at what it means to produce excellent political comedy and satire. A few weeks back on the blog, we discussed the satirical shortcomings of Veep. But it wasn’t until I watched Tanner ’88 that I realized exactly what Veep was missing; Tanner and Veep have many of the same absurd political foils- (image issues, groveling politicians, harebrained staffers, etc) but the verisimilitude of Tanner 88 really raises the stakes and gives the satire more bite. Jokes are the funniest when they’re making fun of real life. And Tanner 88 feels so real that it even fooled Bob Dole.

    In fact, while campaigning in New Hampshire in 1988, Republican candidate Bob Dole ran into an unfamiliar Democratic candidate who was walking around with his daughter and a camera crew. Dole did not recognize the candidate, but because there were cameras around, he greeted the man like an old friend, pretending to know him and wishing him luck before walking away. Unfortunately for Bob Dole, the unknown democratic candidate was Jack Tanner, and Dole had unwittingly earned himself a cameo on the show’s pilot episode.

     It’s this kind of near magic moment that makes Tanner feel like a modern political comedy, despite the scrunchies, pantsuits, obsessive Reagan references (and a young Joe Biden,) that would otherwise make it feel hopelessly dated. 

      Conceptually, it feels like The Office or Parks and Rec, with its guerilla documentary shooting style and deadpan commentary. And all of the political issues being made fun of in 1988 are still very relevant today. The modern election process tends to force candidates to become absurd caricatures of themselves.

       The downside of Tanner 88 is that it only ran for one season. We should have more shows depicting the saga involved with getting someone to the Oval Office. Too often we have a tendency to hide the blood, sweat, and tears that went into major accomplishments; the 110 pound starlet feigning an aversion to the gym and boasting a diet heavy in pizza.  The Dean’s List Johns Hopkins student self-consciously downplaying hours spent in the library before acing a midterm exam.

       Sometimes in life, as in presidential campaigns, you have to spend some time in the trenches in order to win the war. And if you can’t laugh at yourself while you’re doing it, well then, I think I’ve got some House of Cards episodes left on my DVR with your name on them.

 

Masterworks of D.W. Griffith (Bedram)

D.W. Griffith did not invent every cinematic technique employed in The Birth of a Nation, but he no doubt took and focused them into his film, creating a masterful epic. The film, widely criticized for its outrageously racist views, seems to be slowly losing its place in history to Intolerance, the film that Griffith made in response to such claims. While critics might still argue which film is Griffith’s masterpiece, it was undoubtedly The Birth of a Nation that changed cinema forever. Whether one would like to factor in influence or not, the film’s brilliance should not be ignored due to its racist content. To do so would simply be ignoring American movie history.

The film consists of two parts, the first covering the Civil War. Two families are juxtaposed, the Northern Stonemans and the Southern Camerons. The two families are closely linked, as one of the Stoneman brothers, Phil, falls in love with Margaret Cameron, and Ben Cameron becomes infatuated with Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War breaks out, however, the young men join their respective sides, broken apart by the war. This domestic separation is mirrored in the state of the country itself, the nation divided politically between the North and the South.

The film, rather blatantly, sides with the South, presenting them as courageous underdogs. They lack food, their struggle shown in a close-up shot of parched corn kernels in a pan. Their much needed food train is intercepted by Union forces, and in the battle that proceeds, Ben leads a heroic charge against the Union entrenchment line. The North simply stands behind their own lines, using their greater numbers to their advantage. Ben, despite the loss of his soldiers, carries a Confederate flag during the assault, shoving it inside a Union cannon before collapsing. The South loses the battle, but their honor remains, having given it all against the greater forces of the invaders.

While Griffith definitely tries to establish the theme of Southern honor, he by no means glorifies the war. He includes a shot of numerous dead soldiers, prefaced by a title card that reads, “War’s peace.” War is connected to death, and is viewed as futile – not only for the South, but also for the North. As the numerous extreme long shots of battlefields show, once a battle begins, it simply becomes men fighting for their lives. The tragedies of war, however, go beyond the battlefield. Phil and Ben, good friends before the war, are forced to fight on opposing sides. Promising relationships, such as the burgeoning love between Phil and Margaret, are put on hold.

The second half of the film focuses on Reconstruction, and most of the film’s staunchly racist views are contained in this part. The beginning of the movie depicts the introduction of American slavery, stating that this mixing of races “planted the first seed of disunion.” This theme of racial mixing leading to trouble is further explored in the second half, an example being Gus, a freedman, lusting after Flora, Ben’s sister. He chases her onto a rocky cliff, and to avoid the possibility of being raped, she jumps to her death. This threatened rape, then, symbolizes the emasculation of the whites in the South by the suddenly freed blacks, now threatening the order of society.

The film’s tense climax comes when Ben leads the Klan to the rescue of Elsie from the hands of Lynch, a mulatto, who was planning a forced marriage. This rescue, and the Klan’s rescue of the Cameron family from Lynch’s black militia, goes beyond showing the Klan as saviors of these individual people. The Klan is shown as the protector and savior of white glory and honor. During the next election they intimidate the blacks into not voting, and the aftermath of all this leads to the reunion of the two couples – Phil and Margaret and Ben and Elsie. Order is restored.

Griffith, labeled a racist by his critics after the release of the film, attempted to answer them with his next film, Intolerance. The film tackles four separate stories, all set during different time periods. One recounts the fall of Babylon, another tells the crucifixion of Jesus, a third showcases the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and the fourth is a modern tale focusing on a couple torn apart by a false murder conviction.  Each story is connected through themes of intolerance and hatred, and the film, rather boldly, alternates between the four stories.

By having four parallel stories, the film forces comparisons to be drawn between the characters and events throughout these different time periods. There is less focus on the Christ story, but Griffith spends enough time to establish the devastating results of intolerance. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre story is also a lesser focus, though it establishes the idea of religious intolerance and the abuse of power by authority. The other two stories, the modern tale and the Babylon story, are where the true heart of Intolerance lies.

The modern tale echoes some of the frustrations of early 20^th century, displaying the anxiety surrounding big business and interference by outside, moralist forces. One striking example is the mill owner reducing the wages of his workers by 10%, and crushing the strike that follows. One of his employees turns to crime, but tries to break free after marrying. His ex-boss, however, frames him for theft and he is sent to prison. While he serves his sentence, his wife suffers the taking of their child by reformists, who find her to be an unfit mother. What greater intrusion on a mother than the taking of her child? As for the Babylon story, it tackles the issue of betrayal as well as intolerance. The High Priest of Bel does not worship the same god as King Nabonidus, and sees Babylon’s downfall tied to this wrongful worship. This religious intolerance leads him to betray Babylon, setting up a meeting with Cyrus, the Persian invader. The result is the fall of Babylon.

The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance are perhaps two of Griffith’s finest works, both among the most influential films of all time due to their groundbreaking use of various cinematic techniques, including cross-cutting, moving-camera shot, the close-up, the long shot, and so forth. The Birth of a Nation, however, has often been looked at unfavorably, its racism too much to handle. Nonetheless, its importance was recognized, and it was listed in AFI’s Top 100 movies in 1998. Inexplicably, it was removed in the 10^th anniversary edition of the list, though Intolerance found its way onto the list. By removing the film, the AFI is not dealing with the issues the film raises, and is ignoring a monumental moment in film history. It is frightening how effective and brilliant a film that paints the Ku Klux Klan as heroes is, and that is truly the worst aspect of the film. It is undeniably among the most important films in American history, if not the most important, and deserves to be recognized as such. Intolerance arguably shares that honor, but the legacy of The Birth of a Nation should not be overshadowed by it. Both films deserve the recognition.

The Cronenberg Body Horror (Bedram)

There is arguably no bigger name in body horror than David Cronenberg. The Canadian is often credited as one of the originators of the genre, with his notable works including Rabid, Scanners, and The Fly. One of his best explorations into the genre was the 1983 film, Videodrome. While his earlier work, Rabid for example, displayed scientists experimenting on human bodies and the subsequent effects on societal order, Videodrome focuses more on the effects on the individual, though the individual in question can be viewed as representative of the masses.

The film revolves around Max Renn, the president of a television station, who is looking for new material. He is introduced to Videodrome by the man who runs the station’s pirate satellite dish, a show displaying the torture and murder of random strangers. When he asks what the plot is, he is told that there is no plot. The mutilation and murder just goes on for an hour. “Absolutely brilliant” is his response.  He becomes increasingly obsessed with the show, even watching it with his date. She becomes sexually aroused, and the two have sex with it on.

On the surface, one might think that the film is arguing that exposure to sex and violence leads to desensitization. The film does not seem so interested in tackling this issue, however, focusing more on showing that television is a weapon itself rather than the contents that appear onscreen. Max eventually uncovers the secrets around Videodrome, which involves a shady organization (Spectacular Optical) wanting to use the broadcast to manipulate the masses. The head of the organization, Barry Convex, tells him that the violence in the show affects the nervous system, “opening receptors in the brain and the spine” which allows the signal to sink into people, permitting them to be turned into drones. This establishes the idea of television affecting the body, taking it to the extreme and having it go all the way down to our organs and nerves. Max himself becomes a drone, carrying out the will of the organization. If the theme of media being able to influence individuals was not clear enough, Cronenberg includes a scene in which Max has a videotape shoved inside him by Convex, allowing Spectacular Optical to program Max’s mind and control his life. While over-the-top, it gets its message across: television (mass media in particular) programs its viewers.

The film ends with Max taking directions from a television, one that seduces and even shows him how to kill himself. The television is a manipulative object, and once again Cronenberg takes it to the extreme. While sex and violence were the trigger of this entire conflict, they were only a means to a greater end, a vehicle to spread a message. As Max is told, “…it [Videodrome] has something that you don’t have, Max. It has a philosophy, and that is what makes it dangerous.”

David Cronenberg’s foray into body horror is widely believed to have ended with his 1999 film, eXistenZ. His son, Brandon Cronenberg, however, has started from where his father left off. His directing debut, the 2012 film Antiviral, tackled the genre that his father had explored numerous times, taking a social and cultural issue (the power of celebrity culture) and exaggerating it to make a point.

Unlike his father’s films, Antiviral is clearly set in the future, one characterized as extremely sterile. Walls, chairs, clothes, and so forth are almost always stark white, adding to the biologically driven story. While some of David Cronenberg’s films were set in the near feature, they often felt like the present. The future in Antiviral does not feel that way, but at the same time, it does not appear too far away.

In this future, the celebrity-obsessed culture has escalated to unprecedented heights. In order to feel closer to the celebrities they love, people buy the viruses that plagued them, having it injected into their bodies. Syd March, the protagonist of the film, works for one of the companies that acquires and sells the viruses. To make extra money he pirates the illnesses, which involves injecting himself with it, his body serving as an incubator. The obsession over celebrities even carries over to an odd form of cannibalism, in which people can buy meat cultivated from the cells of certain celebrities.  

By combining celebrity culture with something as bodily as viruses, Cronenberg is able to explore the theme of celebrities as ideas and contrast it with the human beings behind those constructs. Syd injects himself with a virus from superstar Hannah Geist, but finds out soon after that she had died from that very disease. Syd is eventually contacted by Hannah’s family, and he learns that Hannah is not yet dead, though she is dying. Syd gets to meet her, and this is one of the very few times she is shown in person. She is simply a sick human being, bedridden and constantly coughing up blood. Her face is drained of its color, bearing no resemblance to the divine, pervading figure plastered on the news and ads across the city. Even when she is finally shown in person, she is emphatically human and not-human due to her ghostly figure.

Both Videodrome and Antiviral use the body horror genre to dissect a part of our culture, taking something already present in our society and exaggerating it. Videodrome is increasingly regarded as having been a couple decades ahead of its time, foreseeing the increasing impact of technology and media, especially with today’s Internet. As for Antiviral, it’s not difficult to imagine that celebrity obsession will continue. At times it appears that celebrity news already takes precedence over more pressing current events. Brandon Cronenberg does take a similar approach to satirical prediction as his father did in Videodrome, but despite his father’s rather grand status in the body horror genre, he manages to display his own unique vision. 

Do You Want To Be Like Me, Or Do You Want To Be Me?: Celebrity Status of Violent Men (Bedram)

Andrew Dominik, a New Zealand-born Australian director and screenwriter, introduced himself to the world in 2000 with Chopper, a film which explored the life of Mark “Chopper” Read. The man was a criminal, and a ruthless one at that, involved in robberies, kidnappings, and even murders – all directed toward others in the criminal underworld of Melbourne. Chopper gained notoriety through his brutal acts of violence, especially after writing numerous books about his experiences.  

The film begins with Chopper watching his own interview on a television set in his cell, in which he declares, “The average man in Australia doesn’t worry about Mark “Chopper” Read. The average man in Australia, he likes me, he couldn’t care less about me. What I do, he applauds.” People are watching this very interview because he’s a “bloody freak show,” an attraction of sorts. Yet, the film does not dwell so much on how he gained fame, but rather why such a character would receive it in the first place. This is a man that declares he is a normal person, “a normal bloke who likes a bit of torture.”

Chopper spent most of his adult life in prison, a place the film drapes in a monochrome blue color, from the walls to the very clothes the prisoners wear. The washed out visuals demonstrates the bland atmosphere of the place, creating a stark contrast to his life outside the prison. Most scenes are highly saturated, the strong colors a manifestation of Chopper’s anxiety and his brash lifestyle.

In one particular scene at a bar, Chopper leads Siam Ozerkam (a drug dealer) outside to the parking lot. Chopper proceeds to ask Siam whose side he is on. Paranoid about the death contract on him, Chopper points a gun at the man, who is not quite sure what to make of his questioning. Chopper grows increasingly paranoid and anxious, the dominating red lighting a manifestation of his mental state. He asks Siam why he brought him out to the parking lot, when the opposite is the case. After an argument arises in which Chopper demands Siam speak English, he shoots the man point blank in the face, enquiring afterwards if he’s okay. Does one laugh or feel for a man who is so terribly inept at controlling his actions? A man whose violence comes across as casual? The man is clearly lost, somewhat delusional, bent on living out his tough-guy fantasy. When the police tell him they have arrested the man that killed Siam, Chopper grows furious, pulling out the murder weapon to prove he was the man that did it. The police still do not believe him, leaving him to proclaim that he has never been so insulted in his life.

The last image of Chopper is back in his cell, watching the very interview from the beginning. He soaks in the attention he receives, not only for being on during primetime, but also from the two guards that watch it with him. He has achieved fame through his life of violence, but once the guards leave, he is alone, sitting on his bed trapped within the four walls of his dull cell. A man worthy of fame?

Dominik continued his examination of the celebrity status of violent men with his second film, tackling a more well-known subject in the 2007 Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The film follows the life of Robert Ford, tackling Jesse James’ celebrity status through Ford’s obsession of the man. Jesse James, a celebrity when alive and a legend after death, was an outlaw, a gang leader that robbed banks and trains, and who claimed to have committed seventeen murders.

After joining the James’ gang on a train robbery, Bob gets to spend some time alone with Jesse. Bob, practically like a child, explains his joy of getting to talk to the man, mentioning all the times he spent in a library reading books about him. Jesse tells Bob they are all lies, clearly dampening his spirits. Does he know the man as well as he thinks he does? The celebrity and the man are not quite the same.  

Jesse allows Ford to stick around, much to his elation. The two spend most of their time together, Bob practically studying Jesse, making note of his gestures and inflections. He even sneaks up on Jesse taking a bath, catching him at his most vulnerable. Bob notes how no one used to be able to catch Jesse off-guard, in addition to having never seen him without his guns. If Jesse appeared immortal and perhaps above other men, he is brought down in this scene; he is clearly mortal, and his naked body definitely human. Jesse, well aware of Bob’s fascination with him, utters, “Do you want to be like me, or do you want to be me?”

The film grapples with this question, yet it never provides a definite answer. When discussing the possibility of killing Jesse with his brother, Charley, he is told that he does not understand the severity of what he is proposing, that life is not just “yarns and newspaper stories.” Bob replies that Jesse is only a human being. Nonetheless he continues his obsession up until the very end of his relationship with Jesse. He rests on Jesse’s bed, feeling on his body the places where Jesse had been shot and pretending that his middle finger was missing the top two knuckles. Here is a childlike man who still is enamored with the famous outlaw, or at the very least the idol he is portrayed as.

Bob finds it impossible to escape Jesse’s shadow after he commits the killing, an ugly and unheroic one. Jesse, in death, arguably becomes a mythic figure, with songs written about him, and pictures of his corpse selling for two dollars each. It comes as no surprise, then, that Bob is eventually murdered, a result of the mass hate for bringing down a legend.

Both Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford explore the celebrity life of violent men, drawing questions of why these men achieved fame. Assassination presents a compelling look through one man’s obsession of an idol, effectively humanizing a larger than life figure and presenting a deeply flawed and paranoid man seeing enemies on all sides towards the end of his life, perhaps foreseeing Bob’s betrayal. Chopper, while not examining as large a figure, presents a distrustful man whose violence comes naturally, with little to no thought of the consequences of his actions. Both films are complex works that analyze the men behind the violence in society, presenting an honest look at such figures that gain notoriety through their acts of brutality.

It's not over 'til it's over (Janice)

Over the past few weeks, my group and I have been working very hard to piece our film together smoothly and succinctly. We had a slight problem exporting our footage during last week’s critique and that presented a problem. There was no way for our professors to give us feedback without us having something to present. Our professors were concerned that we would not have time to incorporate their suggestions.

But it all worked out fine. It took us a while to get our footage into the hands of our professors, but overall they really liked what they saw. Matt Porterfied (name dropping) said that our film was “well directed” among other great things. That was the highlight of class for me! Everything that we have worked so hard to accomplish is finally almost ready to be exhibited. Sure, there are things (minor things) that still need to be worked on, but we are well on our way to completion -- very soon.

We are currently in the process of color correcting our footage and we are also sound mixing and incorporating our score into the soundtrack. Color correction is a very time consuming process. Our DP has his hands full applying his corrections to each and every scene. Thankfully, he’s almost done. Our score was composed and performed by our writer’s father. We were also able to get a student from Peabody to accompany his pre-recorded tracks. Together, their music sounds phenomenal! Her father began composing a few piano melodies after reading his daughter’s script, which is based on the passing of her great-aunt. As a group, we wanted to hear another artist respond to and accompany his music to give it more depth. I can’t wait for people to hear it!

In my previous blog post I mentioned some of the unavoidable hardships that are a part of the collaborative process, but all’s well that end’s well. And the hardships that we’ve endured have made our project and us stronger.

 

This is my final blog post. My journey here and this particular project is drawing close to an end. But I shall leave you with one final exciting update. Upon completion, we will begin looking into local and big name festivals into which we’d like to submit our short film. Sundance, SxSW, and Cannes –here we come! (Maybe… hopefully…)

See you in the movies!  

Just Keep Swimming... (Janice)

We are still knee deep in editing, but as always, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve hit the point of no return in the semester and it is now crunch time to the 99^th power. Things are moving along nicely, but there is just an overwhelming concern time. While I understand these concerns, I expect and would appreciate patience on behalf of my other crewmembers. There was a great deal of patience displayed during our re-writing and shooting processes. What no one seems to realize though outside of his or her realm of specialty and responsibility is that each facet of this process is an artistic institution and deserves the appropriate amount of respect and time. (The composer analogy from my last post seems ever befitting right now). With this being said, it is very true that we have a very real deadline approaching in the next two weeks, but we’re honesty on target for the most part. I’m not worried because our rough cuts, which will be finished very soon, are polished and well conceived/received.

 

The filmmaking process, I imagine, is a lot different when it is not housed in an academic institution for a grade. It becomes more of a democracy than it should be because everyone’s grade is on the line. I’m not saying that the process shouldn’t be democratic in some regards, for it is nothing if not collaborative, but dangerous and unproductive to have too many opinions and requests floating around simultaneously all the time. Also we are granting liberties that don’t actually exist in real life industry situations. And for our purposes and limitations we’ve been very inclusive to everyone at every stage of the game – which in reality rarely happens. I also didn’t want to push my crew over the edge after our Spring Break marathon and we’ve slowly picked back up the pace – although I admit the speed should have been amplified a tad and I accept responsibility for that.

Right now, we are jumping over the final hurdles and I am trying to keep up the morale. But the sentiment for my group, on this day, is to have patience – with a dash of trust because that’s the only way this works. Again, I really appreciate their diligence, passion, and their concerns. We’re almost there and looking good! And yes, it’s all worth it!