HopkinsCinemAddicts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cocaine to London: The First Draft

Exactly 15 months ago, in the midst of the worst string of writer's block I have ever experienced, I decided to drive to a local park, lean against an oak tree and hope the stereotypically hipster vibe would finally give me inspiration to write a screenplay. Looking back on it now, I did not realize just how much this one drive, this one oak tree, this one script would take over my life. A little over a year later it’s all I think about and even then, the whole process is just beginning. This is the story of how Cocaine to London was born.

I am not good at writing. I know that may come off as self-deprecating, but it isn't. See, when I do write, it is very often something I am proud of, but the key phrase of that sentence is when I write. My writing process often alternates between a week of heavy inspiration and several months of not being able to even write a single action line: a bad ratio. Never, though, was this writer's block as bad as the summer of 2022. In 10 months of trying to write the pilot to a new television idea I had, I did not even open Final Draft once. It was very emotionally taxing and after a while of stressing over it, I decided to just push it aside and let the writer’s block end when it ended (hopefully soon). Then, I learned of the Studio North Film Grant, a monetary award given by Johns Hopkins University's student-led production company to two student filmmakers to produce and premiere their own short film. This opportunity was CTL's spark.

Cierra Gladden (middle) and Christian Reidy (right) after the premiere of their grant winning films.

As I arrived at the oak tree, I set an ultimatum to myself. No longer could I let this writer's block persist, let it hide in the background silently and eat away at my dwindling time. I decided, no matter what, by the end of the day, I would have something that I could work on through the summer and eventually submit to the Studio North grant. So with a charged laptop (73% is close enough) and an angry, writing-withdrawal-ridden heart, I took a seat and opened up a fresh Final Draft document. 

The first hour was a lot of brainstorming. Coming into this writing session, the last things I worked on had been high concept teleplays: ensemble stories of eclectic towns, cowboy sci-fi plots, etc. After some thinking about it, and wanting this script to be more shootable, I decided to follow the age-old piece of writing advice: write what you know. Right away, the answer came to me: music. 

I am no musician myself, but music has always surrounded my life from long car rides with my dad playing Metallica and The Mars Volta through his green iPod Nano to my mom throwing folk tunes and Christmas songs into our old CD player. Now, nothing makes me happier than discovering a new artist, hearing a new sound or even just talking about music with other audiophiles. All that being said, very often people who obsess over music are incredibly insufferable. 

This was CTL’s launching point: a script that includes both my love and very valid critiques of the process and people involved in making music. This developed into a story: a punk band carrying all of the angst, anger issues and pretension associated with the genre and the talented, but disrespected bassist just trying to make a living in the industry. 

Very quickly, I found a rhythm to the script, a framing similar to The Office that allowed me to cut to talking heads of the band members. This gave me the ability to explore each of the character’s internal thoughts as well as added a new layer of comedy I had not experimented with before. This, along with the sheer joy I had writing the different musical sequences finally broke me away from my writer's block. In fact, it propelled me into a flow state I had never experienced before. There were page long sections where I didn't even take a second to pause and think. It was all coming naturally. The dialogue already felt witty and layered. The action lines were messy, but potent. I even found myself inserting even more aspects of myself into the script from my fear of monetary stability as a writer to my stubborn, argumentative personality to my writer’s block itself. No more sci-fi cowboys or silly towns. I was writing a script that, for the first time, felt truly personal… and I couldn’t stop.

At 9:42PM (yes, I checked) I finished my first draft of Cocaine to London. A 30 page musical drama with everything from nepo-babies to fleeing the cops to implied profane acts with an orange, the script was a rollercoaster and as I closed my laptop (4%), I couldn’t not smile. The most elated I’ve maybe ever felt, I got back into my car, turned on some Carly Rae Jepsen and drove home.

My BeReal, the day after, reading the first draft for the first time.

The next day, I reread my masterpiece and realized it was perhaps the messiest thing I had ever written. Everything I loved about it the night before now felt like the worst possible decision I could have made. All that being said, I did not get discouraged. In fact, the exact opposite. I had proven to myself that I was still able to create a story, a fact I had begun to worry was no longer true. No longer did I feel trapped in my own head. Instead, I felt motivated. Tomorrow, I told myself, I will go back to the oak tree and I’ll try again and I’ll do that as many times as I need until I read it and have the same unwavering smile I had when I wrote it. No matter what it takes, CTL will be perfect.

 

I’ll be honest, though… I didn’t expect it to take 27 DRAFTS!

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

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.

Sundown: August Whirlwinds

Once the first week of August hit, I was on 100. The work necessary to push us to the next stage included finalizing the cast, holding rehearsals, gathering production design materials, confirming locations, scheduling equipment rentals, and much, much more. Days felt like months leading up to the first day of production, given how much needed to be accomplished in the final days before we shot.

In the second week of August, I went shopping with my Production Designer, Elaine Lu Qu. In prepping for our trip, we went through each scene of the film and pulled out necessary props, costume pieces, and other set dressing elements. We went to Savers (thrift store), Walmart, and Home Depot for items like picture frames for family photos, sticker paper for custom prescription pills, and a wooden dowel for a melee weapon (that we never ended up using). Outside of our shopping trip, I worked on sourcing a prop gun for my Adult Mikey character. Luckily, Brian Song referred me to a local prop armament store that was extremely helpful in delivering a safe, affordable handgun on time.

Aug. 11 - PD shopping at Savers with Elaine, looking for books to fill a therapist's office.

The last five days were the most crucial in pulling everything together. Once I moved back to the city on the 14th, nearly everything that was not Sundown-related was evicted from my consciousness. In between unpacking and various store runs, nearly every moment of that week was spent prepping like mad. The first night in my apartment was spent rushing back from Target to direct a two-hour Zoom rehearsal with nearly all my actors, one of the last before we moved to shoot starting the 19th. We went over some near-final script changes, mainly just small edits to the dialogue, including changes to phrasing and clarifying how lines should be delivered.

In this rehearsal and in prior ones, seeing and hearing the story that I wrote come to life through early performances were surrealistic moments. I always emphasize how Sundown is not just “my” film— it carries with it the creative input of nearly everyone in my cast and on my crew. Watching my actors perform my story, turning it into our story, was when this sentiment felt real. Despite how exhausted I was on a personal and creative level, I always felt a budding sense of accomplishment after each rehearsal. That night, I prepared for what I knew would be another long day of preparation.

The next day, I went to my grandmother’s apartment with my mother and my brother to prep and dress the space before we shot there later the next week. Her space is small, so I wanted to be sure things were set up before I invited my cast and crew in for four days. More importantly, prep involved us getting rid of a China closet that was partially blocking the hallway I wanted to film in. Prepping her space was an all-day affair, but the next day promised some respite.

Aug. 15 - Goodbye China closet, you won't be missed.

Later that week, I went with my Key Hair and Makeup Artist, Abby Cloud, to go cosmetics shopping at CVS. I had sent out a survey to my cast, and most of my actors had their own makeup, but we bought more just in case. In the last few days before the shoot, I returned home to bring a wagon full of props and craft service snacks to my apartment. At that point, my bedroom became a storage closet for my film instead of being a functional living space, but I convinced myself that I didn’t mind.

Aug. 17 - Abby Cloud with me at CVS looking for foundation for our actors.

At this point, all our prep led to the final day before we shot, the end of the beginning. That morning, I met with Adam Rodgers to get some last-minute notes on my script (per a suggestion from Studio North). I was so, so very anxious going into our meeting. All of me felt terrible for burdening Adam last minute with a request for notes, but the meeting went better than I thought it would. With that done, I went later in the day to hold an officially unofficial prep day. I had also originally planned to spread equipment pick-up and prep over two days, but due to actor availability, I had to condense the two into one day. Luckily, my camera and lighting crew were flexible enough to be able to accommodate the change. Isabel, Christian, Elaine, and Chime accompanied me throughout the day while we picked up equipment, tested everything out, and visited all our filming locations for the week. Trusting in their expertise, we ended the day by leaving my grandmother’s house (which felt like two of my worlds colliding in ways I never thought they would).

Aug. 18 - Isabel testing out a fisheye lens (Hi Chime!); sad we never used it.

With cast, crew, locations, equipment, craft services, and more all set, there was one thing left to get in order: me. During the final week before filming, I had a one-track mind, a singular train of thought that never stopped to consider proper mental and physical health. While preparations were productive, they also came with mountains of stress. At this time, I realized I still didn’t know how to delegate tasks, especially those that seemed too cumbersome or burdening properly. I also tend to do most things myself out of fear of pushing my disorganization onto others, which led to me taking on many producer-specific roles. Sourcing snacks for craft services, making the shot list and shooting schedule, and creating call sheets every day was all too much, which I learned by the end of the shoot. I ended the last prep day with a mix of anxiety, excitement, sleep deprivation, and the hopes that everything for Sundown would go according to plan come sunrise.

Sundown: Late May and the Chronicles of June

Pre-production for Sundown began in late May, a few weeks after the Spring semester ended. Looking ahead towards the summer, I had an internship, a part-time job, and a production for a short film lined up, so I knew I had to be efficient with my time. Before I left campus for the summer, I was able to get a head start on location scouting, visiting my then-Script Supervisor, Isabel Salas’ apartment. I learned a few things about location scouting, such as needing to note the location and quantity of outlets and windows, among other things. Isabel graciously allowed me to use their apartment during production, which was one of three locations successfully secured.

Once I got back home, I moved to build a concrete schedule for the entire summer. I held my first production meeting with my producer, John D’cruz on May 25. That same day, I got a fun little curveball thrown my way when my previous Assistant Camera emailed me notifying me that she would be transferring to Columbia in the Fall (now Harvard). Isabel then became my AC and everything was fine again. Before the month ended, I wanted a clear plan on how the rest of the summer was supposed to go. We began with creating a timeline that marked a plan for script revisions, crowdfunding, marketing, location scouting, casting, and ultimately, shooting.

However, plans are made to be changed, right?

Sticking to the plan was going well, that is, until we hit June. Before things went south, I was able to scratch a few things off the list, like sending in my second revision to Studio North, having pared the script down to a more manageable 13 pages. The much-needed Sundown (V3) finally existed and ultimately became the script I worked from for the rest of summer. That same day, I visited my grandmother’s apartment in Baltimore to location scout. Thankfully, she agreed to us using her apartment, so that was two out of three locations secured. I figured the rest of the locations could be created within the walls of the Film Centre (I was right, and this is what we did).

June 2022 - Location scouting, specifically, my main character's childhood home. The china closet needed to go (and it did!)

But back to plans changing and June being problematic. June was slated to be the heaviest month in terms of pre-production. The first task was to draft a script for and shoot the promotional video for the Seed and Spark crowdfunding platform. All I needed to do was create a compelling, well-written, unbelievably beautiful promo video and convince everyone I knew to donate to our project. Easy, right? Well, it could have been, but I became so paralyzed by my fear of failure that I fell down the rabbit hole of self-sabotage. The plan I had for my promo video quickly fell to bits.

Ideally, I would have cast a friend, shot footage that emulated the story, recorded a talking-head video talking about the film, edited it together, and moved on. However, being away from Baltimore (and everyone else I knew also being away from Baltimore) made it harder for my idea to become reality. Or, should I say, I thought it would make it harder. After watching so many other Seed & Spark videos, I convinced myself that there was no way I could create anything good in time and failed to do what was necessary to create a quality video.

May 2022 - Me attempting to shoot footage for the promo video. Not what I had in mind, and it was ultimately scrapped.

Issues with the video provoked more doubts about my project in general. Even writing the script for the video, I ran into challenges discussed elements of the story I still wasn’t sure of. I usually avoid moving forward on projects when all the details crystal clear; I couldn’t afford to do that with Sundown. The timeline I created forced me to keep moving—for better or for worse. This is when my self-doubt and inevitable burnout started to peak. Working 6/7 days per week and planning Sundown at the same time was emotionally draining. I asked myself “is this really going to happen?” nearly every day. My early summer burnout, mixed with a fear of failure and a splash of inexperience created a perfect self-sabotage cocktail. There’s a universe that exists where June 2022 was super productive and fulfilling for me. This isn’t that universe.

Pulling myself back to reality, I knew Sundown had to happen. Yes, because I made a commitment to Studio North, but mostly because I made a commitment to myself. I learned that had to lean on my crew members for external support since my well of internal motivation was running dry. John became my right-hand man and my biggest source of support in the early stages of the project. Aarushi Krishnan joined us as a co-producer early in the month, which I was extremely grateful for.

June 2022 - Aarushi joins 'Sundown' and I had more shoulders to cry on :)

June wasn’t a complete bust. We did set up the Seed & Spark project page without the video, highlighting the story, the crew, and some incentives for donation. June 6, we posted our first post to the Sundown Instagram, created by Nikki Ucheya, which received such positive feedback.

May/June 2022 - Our first marketing meeting and our first Instagram post. I was so overwhelmed with love.

June forced me to confront my deep-set insecurities about Sundown and about my abilities as a filmmaker in general. I am endlessly thankful for everyone I worked with in the early stages of Sundown. I (and my project) survived June, but the month was a lesson in knowing when to reach out for support. The month ended with us moving closer to casting, final script revisions, and of course, shooting. July threatened its own challenges, but after hitting the rock bottom in June, I had nowhere to go but up.

Opening Night Re-examines and Refracts the "Aging Actress" Trope

“I’ll do just about anything to make my character more authentic. I always have.” 

John Cassavetes’ Opening Night (1977) is about a woman whose life is dedicated to performance. Myrtle Gordon subsumes herself in her acting roles. She has no children; her romantic relationships are with her co-star and her director; she has no age to which she will admit, lest her aging jeopardize her career. In her latest play, she stars as Virginia, an aging actress. After a car accident takes place outside the theater after a performance and a young fan is killed, Myrtle begins to hallucinate the young girl as she herself descends further into alcoholism and unreality. Myrtle speaks, like Gena Rowlands’ characters in Cassavetes’ films often do and are, like a mad person who believes she is the only sane one in the room. 

She may be the only sane one in a room of occultists preparing for a seance led by the playwright’s psychic, but her proclamations of self-knowledge are as forthcoming and easy to comprehend as they are tragically revealing of Myrtle’s own blind spots. In sacrificing herself for roles - not sleeping enough, drinking, smoking, all to “get into character” - she indulges in the hedonistic pleasures afforded her by the vocation of inhabiting another person. In pursuit of a character’s authenticity, Myrtle has lost herself; she is unable to see the young woman she once was in Virginia, the “second woman.” Because she inhabits every character so fully, Myrtle’s loss of self impedes her acting. Thus, the straightforward trope of the aging actress is reflected back upon itself, exposing the discrepancies between the artistic rendering and the reality. 

Myrtle moves between stage sets and real-life locales constantly, and themes established in the outside world recur in the narrative of the play. In Virginia’s apartment, two enormous black-and-white photographs of an old woman in a headscarf adorn the walls. Her face is etched with wrinkles, the quintessential babushka; the domineering presence of the photographs beats the play’s audience over the head with its theme of aging womanhood while serving as a clear juxtaposition with Myrtle/Virginia, whose “old” age is less obvious, more well-preserved than “decrepit.” We see the fine lines on Myrtle’s face only when she winces as she knocks back a drink in a close-up, a donning of armor before facing the audience. 

Myrtle is not as old as Virginia, and she identifies this to Sarah Goode, the playwright (played by 1930s movie star Joan Blondell, whose own career imbues the casting with the connotation of the washed-up starlet archetype) as a major sticking point in her artistic process. “You have me up there having hot flashes - I don’t have hot flashes!” Myrtle refers to herself as her character, indicating her increasing difficulty with separating the two, and implicitly accuses Sarah of humiliating her by writing such an old woman for her to play. Myrtle’s worries seem vain and ridiculous, like those of so many vain, ridiculous actresses who care more about how they appear than how accurately they portray the character: a variation on Norma Desmond, the butt of the joke. It’s a culturally accepted phenomenon, and it largely lets Hollywood off the hook for the superficial standards of practice that drive women to such hysterics. Myrtle explains it all: if she plays this role convincingly, her fate is sealed as an old actress relegated to old-woman roles. No matter how good this play might be, no matter how complex and rich of a character Virginia is, she is not an ingenue in the traditional sense and Myrtle will never be such an ingenue again. 

The paradoxical lucidity with which Myrtle analyzes her relationship to Nancy, the young fan killed in an accident outside the theater, further distinguishes her from the crazy actress trope while confirming that she is sort of textbook “crazy,” hallucinating the dead girl as a paragon of desirable youth who says things like, “I like to fuck. I like when men look at me.” Unable to let go of this version of herself who probably never was - first eighteen, then seventeen, impossibly young and beautiful and scarily willing to be used by men in ways that many aspiring actresses rationalize to themselves again and again - Myrtle conjures her and tortures herself with the phantom. When Nancy confronts Myrtle, it is the confirmation of Myrtle’s worst fears about her aging self through the eyes of the younger woman she “killed,” perhaps so no one would rise up, All About Eve -style, in her place? 

In the manner of an experimental character study, Opening Night atomizes and comments on the wider tendency of the actress to make everything about herself, the solipsism required by the profession that dramatizes every aspect of life, encouraged and pilloried by the people who want her to perform, who write plays and direct her in them. The car accident has a lingering effect on Myrtle because it is an awful thing that she witnessed and subsequently internalized, but also because the people in the car with her (her husband, Manny, the play’s director; and her co-star and stage husband, played by Cassavetes) tell the chauffeur to keep driving.

Nurikabe: Keeping It All Organized

We rush ever faster towards production! The anxiety is creeping in a bit as we get closer to shooting, because there’s still a lot that needs to get done, and we have eight short weeks to get it all figured out.

In good news, we’ve almost got all our crew together. We have our cinematographer and production designer locked in, as well as a few production assistants. Additionally, we’ve applied for a shooting permit to film on the C&O canal, so once we have that, our location will be secured! 

I think the one thing that I appreciate now is all the time and effort it takes to plan a production like this. We’re filming at only one location, with a minimal cast and crew, making a twelve minute short. Our film is nowhere near the scale of a full feature, and it’s taken us months just to get everything in order! It has certainly been an educational experience, so we thought we’d share some of the lessons we learned from pre-production.

 

Lesson one: Time management is your friend. As it is with any large undertaking, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the things you need to get done. Sitting down and making a schedule can help make it all a bit less daunting. Make a list of everything you need to complete before you can move into production. Do you need actors? Crew? A location? Figure out the steps you need to take, and then set deadlines for each. Having a set due date for each task makes them less conceptual (“I need to cast sometime in the winter”) and more concrete (“I’ll post a casting call on November 10th”). 

 

Lesson two: Prudence and accountability. You have your deadlines, now stick to them! It is incredibly easy to procrastinate, especially when it comes to making big decisions. Putting things off will cause trouble for you down the line, so respond to those emails, check your to do list. Ask someone you know to hold you accountable. Having a friend that won’t let you get away with slacking off can ensure that you stay on task. 

Lesson three: You don’t know what you don’t know. There’s always something you miss, a question that you don’t know to ask. And there are so many questions you need to answer. How are people getting to set? What equipment do you need? How long is each scene going to take? And so on and so forth. Find the answers, make sure they’re thorough, and don’t assume anything. Things rarely work themselves out. You’re the one that has to make things happen. 

 

Lesson four: Resilience and Forgiveness. Making a movie is hard. Really, really hard. And even with all your planning, things won’t go according to script. So you need to be resilient. Take a deep breath and find a solution. Make peace with the fact that things aren’t always gonna go your way. You’ll miss an email. You’ll realize that you need something that you don’t have. Something will go wrong that is beyond your control. Mistakes will be made and accidents will happen. When these things occur (and they will) you need to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward. Because you still have a movie to make. 

 

And the only thing that can ever stop it from being made is you. - TC

 

Nurikabe: Updates and The Writing Process

Updates: I wish we had some tangible updates to share with you, but unfortunately, it’s all just emailing people. This week, we’re finalizing our cast and putting our crew together. We’re creeping ever closer to production, which is very exciting! 

Alright, we’ve covered the research process. Now, we get to my (Thomas’s) favorite part: writing! I think I’ve always wanted to be a storyteller. As a kid, I was reading all the time or making up my own stories. And while I don’t read as much as I used to, the second part is still going strong. But I never really got into screenwriting until my freshman year, when Studio North started their underclassmen writers room. For some reason, I always had this notion that I needed to fulfill certain requirements in order to be a writer. “I don’t really read much, so I can’t be a writer” and similar thoughts always held me back. And then I joined this writers room and was basically told “alright, you’ve got a week to write this episode. Go.” And that’s when I realized that there was only one real requirement of being a writer: you write. So I did, and I haven’t stopped since.

Process. Every writer has one, and I’m no exception. Everything I’ve ever written has started as a blank Google document. At the top, I put a general summary of what I want to do. For this project, that was some sort of modern fairytale. Next, I make a list of characters. Character is everything for me. Before I can start writing a story, I need to know who that story is happening to. I write out a short bio for each character, outlining their strengths, weaknesses, fears, and desires. And slowly, each one takes shape. 

I knew that there would be three characters, as that number often shows up in fairytales. They would be college-bound seniors, a state of being that was fresh in my mind. And they would all be anxious about something. Because fairytales often serve as ways to teach children, to help them confront and make sense of the world. Certainly, that transition to college, to adulthood is a time of learning. And as I thought about what anxieties that brought with it, my characters presented themselves.

Three friends, Amanda, Jenny, and Grant, each with their own unique hurdles. Grant is a homebody, lacking the drive and confidence to take hold of his life’s direction. Jenny is insecure, fearing that her decision to attend a community college makes her inferior to her peers. And Amanda doesn’t want things to change. She’s not ready to let go of the life she knows just yet. Now I just needed to figure out a plot that would force them to confront these fears. 

I can’t tell you too many details (can’t spoil the film before we’ve made it!) but I will talk about its creation in general. Once I have my characters down, I write down the typical story outline (hook, inciting incident, first act turning point, midpoint, second act turning point, climax) and write a sentence for each. It’s not much, but it gives me enough structure to start filling in the details. Sometimes I’ll write a treatment, but usually I just jump right into the script. I’m a slow writer. I can’t “just put something down on the page.” It can be painful, because often I’ll know what I want to do, just not how to do it. I tend to pace around my room, saying different lines until I find the right one. I usually make a vibes playlist, a collection of songs and scores that I think capture the feeling of the film, and play it in the background. I’m also directing and editing the film in my head. It’s not written explicitly on the page, but I’m thinking about how each scene is shot, how the lines are being delivered, and where the cuts are. Sometimes, it feels like I’m watching the movie in my head and just writing down what I see on screen. 

 

In short, writing can be overwhelming and exhausting. Every sentence feels like an hour, each page an eternity. But at some point, the script gets finished. Then I send it to some friends, get feedback, and start all over again. All this effort for about twelve pages. Will it all have been worth it? Will that work even show through in the finished product? Only time will tell I suppose.

^{Photo by Curtis Nishimoto}

An Unconventional Cut

Showing up to fourth grade picture day after a botched haircut and hearing, “What happened to your head?” from a classmate haunts me to this day, and likely will forever.  Even so, that experience pales in comparison to that of a man with no social experience and scissors for hands, thrust into a too small town of gossiping housewives and their unconcerned husbands.  Such is the fate of Edward Scissorhands.

Created in a lab, with his progenitor now deceased, Edward spends countless months alone in a gothic castle which looms over the nameless suburb.  As with many aspects of the film’s presentation, the contrast is stark and definite but not heavy handed. Completely unaware of the world outside of the castle and its beautiful gardens, tended to by Edward’s own blades, a hapless door-to-door saleswoman, Peg Boggs, stumbles in and brings him into town. 

The things which typify a suburban environment, such as pastel homes with near identical floor plans and freshly trimmed lawns, are so utterly homogenous that they only serve to unsettle.  The set design and cast of intrusive neighbors highlight societal norms which are often taken for granted, and become oppressive in their conformity.

Edward is clearly an outsider, and the nosy townsfolk take note before he can get settled.  Beyond the obvious, his face is pocked with scars from self-inflicted wounds.  In his first attempt to dress in civilian clothes, he tears them to shreds and slices clean through a pair of suspenders.  Edward is effectively an infant when it comes to etiquette and social matters, rarely speaking and often misunderstanding what is said to him.  He doesn’t even respond when referred to as Ed, likely because he fails to recognize it as a shortened version of his own name. 

In a town where your business is everyone’s business, Edward’s quirks quickly turn him into a novelty item.  He is constantly paraded around town, encouraged to give eccentric haircuts and coerced into handling the neighborhood’s gardening duties.  That is until the differences become too stark and the sheen begins to come off.  Outliers are only used as showpieces, not to be truly accepted into society.

The film doesn’t stop its critique at a community level, but brings it to a personal, familial level.  Seated around the Boggs’ family’s dinner table, Mr. Boggs poses an ethical question to Edward, concerning what he should do if he stumbled upon an unmarked briefcase full of money.  With childlike charm, Edward claims he would like to give it to his friends, but Mr. Boggs, is quick to remark that the proper thing to do is to take it straight to the authorities.  Kim, the family’s daughter and Edward’s crush, speaks up for Edward.  It is one of the many instances in which we see the personal good compared to the common good, and individual desires set against public expectations.

There are further questions prompted concerning spirituality, as well as the contrast between the organic and the artificial.  Edward is a manmade construct, and despite his stunted social nature, he possesses all interior aspects of a human.  He clearly feels love, sorrow, and shame, yet the religious zealot in town curses him and calls for a return from whence he came.  It is difficult, if not impossible, to say what defines a human, but it is a question which the film doesn’t hesitate to bring up.

Despite its weighty nature, the film does not take itself too seriously and is full of enchanting moments.  In a tender encounter between Edward and Kim, she tells him, “Hold me,” to which he replies, “I can’t.”  It is a dismal scene which highlights Edward’s own defects, but in a self-aware, lighthearted manner.  It is moments such as these, in which abnormality and empathy are married, that the film works best – and there are plenty.

As always, Tim Burton beautifully places the mad, strange, and misunderstood at the forefront of the story, doing so in his signature style, which despite its bright colors and eccentric costumes retains a peculiar authenticity.  Edward Scissorhands is far from your traditional heartwarming Christmas story, but it is an endearing tale which will resonate with the insecurities in all of us.

Lady Bird's Coming-of-Age Journey

“I wish I could live through something,” states the protagonist of Lady Bird at the beginning of the film. As the titular heroine, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, rides in the car with her mother, Marion, she expresses this desire to attach a grand meaning to her life. This meaning, we quickly learn, does not exist for her in Sacramento, her hometown. “I hate California. I want to go to the east coast,” she says, and a close-up shot of her looking out the car window emphasizes how she yearns to be across the country, far from the colleges that she and her mother have just taken a road trip to tour. The flat, dull and unchanging landscape that the car moves through helps frame her desire for escape. 

This desire of Lady Bird’s launches the first conflict in the film: an argument between her and her mother, who sees it as an example of her daughter’s selfishness and lack of gratitude. The addition of this conflict in the scene is subtly matched by Marion’s turning of the car; their previously straight path and corresponding fluidity have been disrupted. They begin talking over one another, and their eyes fail to meet for the rest of the scene, as the camera alternates between individual close-ups of each of them. These elements serve to establish their opposing points of view; in this conversation, they are not truly listening, but simply speaking, reacting, and revealing their frustrations with the other. To free herself from this fight, Lady Bird jumps out of the moving car — an action that both comically and strikingly encapsulates her feelings of confinement. Marion screams, and the film quickly cuts to a close-up of a hot pink cast on her arm, with the words “fuck you mom” written on top. The cast matches her dyed pink hair, and both serve as markers of her individuality throughout the film.

These initial few minutes set up a focus on mother-daughter conflict and an adolescent’s struggle for what they want, which is a central theme of the film. In the first part, we continue to see that Lady Bird feels her life is lacking in several ways, some small and others large. For example, she and her best friend, Julie, walk through a wealthy neighborhood after school, with quick cuts of them longingly looking at the grand, beautiful homes. Then she wants her mother to buy her a magazine, so she can read it in bed as “rich people do”, rather than having to borrow it from the library. It is this dissatisfaction with her environment, and her to desire to leave California, that most prominently ties her to her mother. The film uses their perceptions of Sacramento, and their movements through it, to distance them at the beginning and connect them at the end. 

Early on in the film, Marion drives home from work, and there are several small, simple but beautiful cuts of Sacramento on her ride home. Shots of Marion are interspersed, and John Hartford’s “This Eve of Parting” plays. Marion is constantly grounded in reality, and an abrupt cut from the song to a slamming of her car door, reminds us of this at the end of the sequence. Before that, though, there appears to be her peaceful, almost romantic admiration of setting. 

Lady Bird, on the other hand, is focused on escape. She constantly rejects Sacramento, an act which Marion ostensibly takes to be a rejection of everything she has tried to give her. These opposing perspectives of their home, and what Lady Bird’s place in the world can be, push them apart. However, the end of the film brings them back together by recalling Marion’s drive in a couple of ways. When Lady Bird receives her acceptance letter for a school in New York, “The Eve of Parting” plays again. Marion, angry that Lady Bird had secretly applied to east schools, has ceased speaking to her at this point. But the song functions as a poignant reminder of their bond, and how Marion has to come to terms with Lady Bird’s departure. At the very end, after Lady Bird has arrived in New York, she calls her parents. As she speaks, the film cuts to shots of the same drive in Sacramento, and then it alternates between Marion and Lady Bird each driving alone in the car. As Lady Bird looks out of her window, there is a clear appreciation of and comfort in Sacramento that she never held before. Here, there is finally a resolution where we become aware of Lady Bird’s growth and her connection with her mother.

What is also interesting to me about Lady Bird is how much of her identity is ill-defined. She isn’t particularly interested in or good at one thing, but she hopes to be, which makes her a more ordinary yet more dimensional character than typical coming-of-age protagonists. For example, it’s her senior year and she sits in the office of a nun at her Catholic school, where she says it’s her tradition to run for student government, but she knows she won’t win. Similarly, she says she’d like to join the math olympiad team, to which the nun says: “But math isn’t something you’re terribly strong in.” The nun also pushes her to audition for the theater group’s fall musical, which Lady Bird didn’t even know existed until now. She gets a minor role in the musical, but complains: “The part I got was basically not getting in.” Then she abandons the group in the spring, refusing to audition for the play. 

What we never doubt that she genuinely cares about, though, is the abstract idea of freedom and what her future could entail. Her desire for going to New York isn’t rooted in something specific, but just in her belief that it has “culture”. Lady Bird stands in contrast to Julie and Jenna, the “popular girl” that she befriends, who are both content to stay in Sacramento. She also doesn’t have proof that she deserves what she aspires to have, and is reminded of this at different instances, like when her counselor initially laughs at the idea of her applying to east coast schools. Lady Bird simply wants, and she shows us that that’s reason enough.

Beyond Comedy: Napoleon Dynamite

A lanky, curly headed boy stands in front of a modest one-story home. The goof wears a horse graphic t-shirt tucked into denim jeans with no belt and peers through clear-lensed aviator glasses, eyes half closed, mouth wide open. He boards the school bus and saunters to the very last row, towering over the other students, all of whom are significantly younger. A fellow student asks, “What are you going to do today Napoleon?” to which he snaps “Whatever I feel like I want to do. Gosh!” A sharp retort that is both comic in its delivery and charged with underlying anxiety. It is evident from merely a few seconds on the bus that the titular character of Jared Hess’ 2004 high school comedy, Napoleon Dynamite, is troubled. It serves as the first of many clever, oftentimes ridiculous, scenarios in which the qualms of an outcast riddled with angst, uncertain of his identity as a high school student, and his place in the world at large are carefully explored.

Each element of the film plays into an uncomfortable and unpredictable mood, while servicing the aesthetic of a rural town stuck twenty years in the past. We follow Napoleon through a day at Preston High School. Bullies shove him into lockers, he delivers a current events report on the Loch Ness monster, he plays tether ball alone, and he calls his adult brother Kip to ask for Chapstick. A day which is at once absurd and banal, yet riveting; while no particular event directly progresses the plot, we slowly become acquainted with the questions and inner machinations of Napoleon’s mind. The sense of everything being oddly ordinary yet intriguing, as well as the slow-burn character development through unremarkable events is not unique to the opening scene, and only ramps up throughout the remainder of the film.

In terms of execution, a synth-heavy original soundtrack, along with the inclusion of some classic ‘80s tunes, pair perfectly with the plot, setting, and costume design. Further, keen attention to audio aids in placing the viewer; flies audibly buzz past and cows bellow in the background.

Jon Heder’s role as Napoleon is undeniably brilliant, but he is surrounded by other notable performers. Each delivers keen facial expressions and perfectly timed delivery; in my mind, there is no role which could have been cast or performed any better. Beyond that, there is a patience to every encounter which results in expert pacing. No moment feels rushed and pauses between dialogue are often drawn out, further lending to a curated sense of uncertainty and immaturity. Each interaction holds meaning, revealing new aspects of characters’ desires and insecurities. These are conveyed with a familiar clumsiness which hearkens to the often repressed memories of youth’s struggles.

It is in this essence of adolescence, so expertly captured, in which the film begins to transcend its perceived place as a quirky, but superficial high school comedy. Every character, from Napoleon’s dare-devil grandmother to his friend Deb, reveals complex and base desires. There is nobody with more wisdom than anyone else; each character is portrayed as impulsive and elementary. Each character also grapples with questions of identity: who do they believe they are and who do they want to be? Napoleon’s grandmother goes for trips to the sand dunes with a secret boyfriend, while Uncle Rico can’t stop thinking about 1982 and what could have been. These troubles, often typical of high school, seep into the lives of every character.

This idea of an uncertain identity is infinitely relatable, seeing as such questions can never be definitively answered. Everybody is portrayed with the same confusion and infantile nature as a high school student; there is little discernible difference in maturity and authority between your eldest and youngest, most significant and most minor characters. They are all flawed and insecure.

The film’s complexity does not end with this universal infantilization. Hess also grapples with complex issues of class, custom, and gender in unique and interesting ways. Pedro, Napoleon’s new classmate and friend from México, is derided by the school’s principal for failing to understand his instructions. Further into the film Pedro is again brutally chastised for bashing a piñata in the likeness of another student, something he claims is customary in his native country; an intentionally ridiculous and comic scene, but even so it is a moment which highlights cultural differences and the principal’s blatant ignorance. Later, Napoleon’s sleazy uncle preys on his nephew’s high school classmates and attempts to sell them breast enhancement supplements, alienating young women and exposing Napoleon to further disdain. These only serve as a few examples of the more profound questions and issues which cleverly find their way into the film.

A deceptively deep film which at once brims with excitement and dread. It did not have me laughing out loud, but instead smiling throughout. Each moment is not demarcated by exciting action, place, or dialogue, yet there is a charm and a familiarity to its composition which requires nothing of the sort. And while any realistic depiction of high school, and life for that matter, is full of plenty of sorrow, Napoleon Dynamite finishes in a moment of triumph, with each character feeling secure in their identity, at least for a moment. Pedro has won the class election, Napoleon has danced his heart out to tremendous applause, Kip has a girlfriend, and Napoleon finally has a partner to play tether ball with.

Familial Sacrifice in Succession (Eric)

HBO’s comedy-drama series Succession features a host of selfish people making morally dubious decisions. Character actions are often related to personal standing within the global media conglomerate at the center of the show, Waystar Royco. In the Season 2 finale, titled “This Is Not for Tears,” the disregard for ethical concerns by many players in the company has led to a crisis. Someone of prominent position within the company will have to take the fall for decades of mishandled sexual abuse and wrongful death cases at Waystar Royco. As the patriarch of the Roy family and CEO of Waystar Royco, Logan Roy decides that it’s his own son Kendall who’s to be sacrificed. But in a twist ending, it’s Kendall who lands the last punch of the season when he places the guilt for the coverup squarely on his father’s shoulders. The dialogue at the climax of the episode sets up the possibility for this twist ending, and it also hints at some of the philosophy behind the two main characters of the show, Logan and Kendall.

The season finale takes place on a yacht. While supposedly a mini-vacation away from the congressional hearings that the family and company has been dealing with, the break effectively serves as a conference to debate who will be sacrificed for the company. Logan Roy rules both his family and his company with a Machiavellian fist, and in regards to his business dealings, this manifests itself in total disregard for the wellbeing of others. In the penultimate episode of Season 2, Logan’s brother equates him to Hitler in terms of the scale of human suffering he’s caused through his cutthroat capitalism. This sentiment is echoed throughout the finale, as the center of the crisis specifically involved the victims of Waystar Royco.

In the finale, Logan calls his son into a private room on the yacht to tell him personally why he’s been chosen as the scapegoat. He explains how the Incas, in times of crisis, used to sacrifice a child to the Sun. The implication here is that, if the situation called for it, Logan might literally sacrifice Kendall to make things right. While the present situation calls only for Kendall’s figurative death, Logan is reestablished in this scene as a brutal go-getter, someone wouldn’t hesitate to kill given the right circumstances. Kendall proceeds to ask his dad if he ever believed Kendall could one day take the reins as CEO, to which Logan replies, “You’re not a killer. You have to be a killer.” Importantly, part of the trouble Waystar finds itself in concerns the death and possible murders of migrant sex workers on the company’s cruise ships; during the coverup, these individuals were documented as NRPI: No Real Person Involved. The value of human life is not something that Logan Roy concerns himself with. Directly prior to their conversation, images are shown of the massive yacht towering over some local Mediterranean fishermen, a reminder of the distance between the Roys and the people they exploit.

Ultimately, Kendall does prove to possess the killer instinct necessary to survive in his dangerous environment. Kendall’s world is one in which his own father is willing to send him to prison for the good of the corporation, and he’s given the choice to either accept this fate or fight back. In the press conference at the end of the episode, Kendall shocks everyone by throwing his father under the bus. Logan Roy watches on the television, and in the final seconds of the season, we watch as his face turns into an almost imperceptible smile, a smile that seems to express a reluctant pride in his son for having finally learned how to kill.

 

Nights of Cabiria: Showing Character Growth (Eric)

Nights of Cabiria (1957), directed by Federico Fellini, features a prostitute who struggles to make a living for herself in post-war Italy. She is extremely poor, yet her financial situation is in better shape than her romantic life. She has an idealistic vision of love, and throughout the film, she is crushed multiple times by predatory or manipulative men. The film is bookended by two scenes which closely mirror each other in terms of action; in each, a man takes advantage of Cabiria. Yet, the manners in which these scenes unfold are visually unique from one another in such a way that both reveals the character arc of the protagonist and establishes distinct tones at the opening and close of the film.

In the opening sequence, we see Cabiria dancing with her boyfriend Giorgio by a river. The camera then tracks Cabiria down to the side of the river, and Giorgio follows her soon after. Giorgio wears dark sunglasses. Clearly, he’s not to be trusted, or at the very least his intentions are unclear. The scene then cuts back to a wider frame, and it’s emphasized how isolated the two of them are. Cabiria is alone with Giorgio when he pushes her into the river and runs up the hill, never to be seen again. In the background there is a small crop of buildings in the largely rural surroundings. Cabiria is ultimately saved from drowning, and once she’s been revived, she angrily tells off the people who have saved her and ventures out to find Giorgio. She is still naive at this point of the film, and the camera is distant from her in the buildup to her near-death experience, choosing instead to highlight Giorgio, his eyes covered as he checks for potential witnesses to the crime.

The final sequence plays out in much the same way, with Cabiria getting swindled. However, the act is not comical as it was in the opening. Here Cabiria walks through the woods with Oscar, her new boyfriend for whom she’s sold her house to start a new life with. They walk towards the edge of a cliff. When they get to the cliff, we see the back of Cabiria as she looks out across the water. In front of her is a vast landscape, even more remote than in the opening sequence. The camera is closer to the actors’ faces this time, and we can see the anxiety on Oscar’s face as well as the fear in Cabiria’s as she realizes she has been manipulated again. While Oscar is present in the scene, the camera is always following Cabiria, and she is often in the center of the frame. The scene then cuts between Cabiria on her knees and Oscar standing and looking nervous. Oscar is shot from slightly above, and the camera does not make him an imposing figure in the scene. Cabiria realizes herself what is happening, and she takes initiative and throws her money at Oscar, and she nearly jumps off the cliff herself. She has more agency here, as opposed to her passivity at the start of the film when she willingly goes to the edge of the river as Giorgio tells her to.

After Oscar takes her money, the camera then follows Cabiria as she walks through dark woods onto a road, where she is met by a parade of musicians. The other actors dance and spin around Cabiria as she walks straight down the road, and the camera tracks her path. The final thirty seconds is a close-up tracking shot on Cabiria’s face, and she smiles briefly at the camera before the film ends. She can deal with what life throws at her. While she might be more careful about falling in love, there’s no implication that she will throw out her original idealism. She literally picks herself off of the ground and emerges from a dark wood and onto a road, signaling her readiness to continue with her journey and the notion that the worst is behind her.

 

Post-Grad Purgatory in The Graduate (Eric)

The Graduate (1967) begins with an opening credit scene in which Ben, played by Dustin Hoffman, floats through an airport terminal on a moving walkway with only a white wall behind him. He doesn’t take any physical action to move towards his destination; he simply drifts by. The film takes place during the summer after Ben’s college graduation, and it explores the sense of confusion that the protagonist faces. Many elements of the mise-en-scene help to inform the notion of Ben’s existential anxiety while also commenting on the rigid social forces with which he is made to contend with.

As he is forced by his parents to greet guests in his home immediately after coming back from college, Ben explains to his father that he’s worried about his future. Ben doesn’t know where he’s going. When he comes down to greet the guests, he is framed in a handheld closeup to illustrate his sense of discomfort and aimlessness as various friends of his parents approach him with questions and conversations that he clearly doesn’t want to engage with. Ben appears completely lost throughout this whole sequence, and like the opening credits, there is a heavy presence of the color white in both the set and costume design. Ben seems to be drifting through a sort of post-graduation purgatory.

When Ben escorts the predatory Mrs. Robinson to her home, he is greeted with the massive white façade of her suburban mansion. At the end of the film, he again journeys into a massive white building, a church, to disrupt his love interest’s wedding. In this way, the color white comes to symbolize both the institutions Ben must contend with as well as the sense of nothingness that currently pervades his life. The white is often in contrast with more vivid colors, specifically green and blue. Right before Ben has sex with Mrs. Robinson for the first time, (which takes place in a white hotel room on a white bed), a blinding white light shines out from the bathroom behind him. This is immediately juxtaposed with a sequence representing Ben’s post-coital bliss, in which he literally floats in a blue pool surrounded by green bushes. At the end of this sequence, he is rudely awakened from his daydream by his father, who stands directly in front of the blinding white sunlight. The dialogue here again supports Ben’s current meandering. When asked what he’s doing by his father, Ben replies, “Well, I would say that I’m just drifting.”

The drifting past a white wall from the opening credit sequence stands in contrast to Ben’s hectic action near the end of the film, in which he drives through the night in order to find Elaine, his love interest. He drives through the night, and past mountains and trees to get to Elaine, who is trapped inside the massive white church. In context with the Robinson’s large white house from the beginning of the film, the white buildings can be seen as seen as hostile arenas. In the Robinson mansion, Ben is cornered by Mrs. Robinson. In the Church, he is attacked by the wedding party. Ben must contend with the powerful forces of tradition and institution in order to achieve his freedom, to escape from his blank white rooms. Ultimately, Ben and Elaine escape the church and go out on the road, but the film ends in uncertainty as the two find themselves in a bus surrounded by the eyes of middle-aged bus-goers; Ben sits on the bus with the same lost face from the start of the film as he is confronted with an unknown future and the judgement of social convention and respectability.

 

See You In 27 Years: A Look at Andy Muschietti's It Duology (Cristina)

I continue to find myself unbelievably fond of Andy Muschietti's It Chapter One. While on the surface It is a horror movie about an evil clown named Pennywise, when you dig deeper it's an earnest character-driven ensemble film. The movie does a meticulous job balancing all seven members of the Losers' Club, a plucky band of outcasts being tormented by the clown, as unique characters with strong voices, separating them at times to develop their individual journeys and bringing them together to bounce off each other. Whether it's Richie making a terrible joke, Beverly saying something courageous, or Stan dryly rolling his eyes, the characters' have great consistency in their interactions with each other, a playful banter that easily escalates to genuine tension between their distinctive personality types as the stakes increase. 

At its core, it's a coming of age film, following the kids as they confront the evils of the world around them for the first time, only able to find understand and gain the ability to fight back against their circumstances when united. And while their circumstances include a killer clown, they also encompass each characters' individual struggle: Bill's grief at the loss of his brother, Eddie's disillusionment with his mother's overparenting, Mike's forced adjustment to independence and maturity as an orphan. It's only by coming together and fighting the clown that each character is able to accept their situation and grow.

It Chapter Two picks up 27 years later as the characters reunite after Pennywise returns to torment their hometown again. Because of some evil magic, all the characters who left town have no memory of their childhood there at all and only when returning home do they start to remember, both the evils they encountered and their friendship. It becomes essential for each character to uncover parts of their past in order to actually kill Pennywise, once again pairing the clown's attacks with the kids' personal and familial struggles in a series of flashbacks. The narrative becomes a tale of confronting repressed trauma and only being able to overcome that trauma by confronting it head-on. 

The film's narrative is aided by the performances, each adult actor remarkably capturing every slight mannerism from the children's performances. Visually the characters haven't changed at all, unable to while they were unable to overcome the trauma they've repressed.

All that keeps Chapter Two from being as successful at its narrative as its predecessor is the very effectiveness of the first movie. Both the original Stephen King novel and the 1990 miniseries cut between two timelines instead of separating them, pairing the adults return and reunion with the memories they slowly regain of their original fight with Pennywise. The driving force of the adult Losers becomes their ability to uncover what happened that summer and how they were able to fight the clown so they can defeat it again. By separating the children's timeline into its own contained narrative, removing its episodic nature for a more streamlined plot, the audience isn't held in suspense in the adults' timeline, but is rather waiting for the adults to catch up to what the audience already knows. 

While the underlying messages of the narrative are still preserved, the 170-minute runtime of the second film only exacerbates the lack of suspense. The movie is carried along by the charisma of the characters, the intrigue of seeing them as adults, and a promise of finality for their struggles, both internal and against the clown. 

Ultimately Muschietti's adaptation shows true understanding of the point of King's novel and an ability to convert deep thematic narratives to screen. There's something powerful about the narrative that I can't escape, the way the characters find solace in each other and strength in themselves when united. Despite the struggle of pacing in the second film and the campiness of the horror, I continue to recommend it and can't wait to see it again.

The (Sort of) Homestretch (Vanessa)

The last five weeks of my life have been amongst the most exhausting of my college career. However, today, the day that episode one of HOUSE will premiere alongside Studio North's two other 2018-2019 projects (which I HIGHLY recommend looking into, as they are both stellar projects) makes me realize that those five weeks are also amongst the most rewarding.

April for film majors (and from what I understand a lot of humanities majors...and other majors...let's just go with everyone) is brutal. If you are on the production track, like I am, you are either (1) helping on someone's set, (2) working on your own set, (3) editing a project, or (4) some combination of the previous three at the same time. In addition to studying for exams, writing papers, preparing for projects, balancing your other commitments, and trying to not completely self-destruct by eating and sleeping. Because I seem to like to make my life difficult, I found myself at 4 quite frequently the past few weeks. My priority, however, has been finishing up episode one (which takes viewers to the Chosen Few DJs Reunion Picnic in Chicago) for the premiere.

It has been a time of self-discovery, technical learning, pure frustration, and pure elation. And if the above words don't accurately describe editing, I don't know what does.

To start, I have learned a great deal about myself in this five-week span: from an ability to go through a whole pack of gum in two days just to give the rest of my body something to do while clicking away in Premiere, to an extreme sense of protectiveness over my project and its subjects, to the realization that to best avoid skipping meals while editing for 6 to 12+ hours at a time, one should always pack a couple of sandwiches just in case. This is all to say editing is physically and mentally draining. You are sitting, staring at a screen for hours at a time. Fun fact: the human body is not designed to sit and stare at a screen for hours at a time. I was confused the first few times I stayed at the JHU-MICA Film Center from noon to midnight as to why I would wake up and my back would tingle, my wrists would ache, and my eyes felt strained. Alas, I am not built for editing. But by day three of long editing sessions, I learned the key is really just having good posture. So I would count that as one of the things I learned as well.

As far as the protectiveness over my project goes, working on it for longer stretches of time gave me a deeper sense of attachment to it. Editing, for HOUSE, is an exercise in telling one story through many voices. I wanted to make those voices shine as best as they could. Which ties into the technical learning that occurred throughout the process of editing for a more intense amount of time than I had before.

When you first offload your footage from a camera after shooting, I think your immediate reaction, as a director, is probably "does it look good" and "does it sound ok". During editing, what looks "good" becomes "how do I make this look even better" and what sounds "ok" becomes "oh my god all the sound levels are different and anyone watching is going to know this IMMEDIATELY after the first cut between interviews." Every time I edit a project, I inevitably end up on a youtube page, internet forum, or at the mercy of my more skilled and knowledgeable film friends to figure out how to do something that ends up being incredibly easy. For the Chicago episode, this manifested in the form of three youtube videos on the "maintain power" audio transition tool in Premiere, several videos on color correction that I ended up learning a great deal from despite ultimately leaving the footage to be shown at the Studio North premiere ungraded (another fun fact: color grading images shrouded in smoke is not a simple task), and at least one forum on maintaining consistent audio levels throughout a video.

Overall, a good, albeit sometimes challenging process of absorbing and applying information, sometimes experiencing the joy in actually following the directions and ending up with a decent product, other times ending in looking up another video. Editing, like any skill, is larely about having the patience to continue learning and applying what you learn to practice. This holds true for the Chicago episode. At times it was incredibly frustrating not knowing how to do something you just KNOW can't be that hard to do. But the excitement in finding a solution, whether in terms of restructuring the sequence of your edits or by having an "ah ha!" moment when you finally DO find a solution is exciting.

Which leads me to the final two words: frustration and elation. One of my closest friends, who actually is pursuing a career as a professional editor and doing a spectacular job of doing so, once told me that with filmmaking, your lows are exceptionally low, but your highs are exceptionally low.

Editing is all about attention to detail. And not getting one detail to be as precise as you want can be incredibly frustrating. Along with the protectiveness over a project mentioned earlier comes the desire to achieve perfection. Which is at times, nearly impossible. But when a solution is found, or someone laughs at a joke you set up, or you finally just get something to WORK, it is immensely satisfying to craft a story out of raw material and see it succeed in its mission.

The Studio North premiere induces a weird mixture of excitement and anxiety for me. On one hand, I get to share this wonderful thing with people. On the other hand, this "thing" that I have been with since before it was even shot will soon be exposed to a world of opinions and grievances. Are people going to judge my work? Are people going to judge me because of my work? The long nights of adjusting audio levels, of trying to time a cut perfectly with a bit of music, of hoping and praying that I can convey how much fun house music is and how truly wonderful its fanbase is will be up to whoever is watching it. And hopefully, though an audience might not see those tiny adjustments and won't necessarily understand the long nights that went into creating, they'll feel the energy, unity, and spirituality that I hope the editing of the Chicago episode can appropriately convey.

We'll just have to see. 

What Is Editing and How Do You Edit (10 Hours of Footage Edition) (Vanessa)

In my last post, I talked a lot about the difference between process and processing as it relates to editing. This week, I would like to circle back to that, but now with a focus on process and what editing is.

One of the earliest things I remember learning as a film major was about Sergei Eisenstein and the development of Soviet montage theory. Montage refers to the process of film editing in which a series of shots are edited into a sequence. Montage theory goes on to develop the idea that connecting a series of images has the power to convey different thematic and emotional messages about what an audience is seeing on screen depending on how the editor chooses to sequence them. The common example is that if you cut from an actors face to an image of a bowl of soup, the audience will perceive hunger as the emotion the sequence is trying convey. Which differs from if you cut from an actors face to an image of a woman lying down in a nightgown, conveying a different emotion or concept, such as lust.

What I find so fascinating about editing is just how underappreciated it is, yet how integral it is to how people understand the “language” of movies. Taking a film class was the first time that I really thought about the fact that movies are sculpted in every sense of the word: from how they are created on paper through screenwriting, to the choices made by the director and cast, to how a cinematographer decides to shoot a certain scene, to the decisions made by an editor when piecing everything together to form a movie.

Editing a documentary web series has challenged my own understanding and appreciation for editors because of how the process of building the story really comes from fragments of unscripted material. For HOUSE this is fun (and a bit daunting, if you couldn’t tell from my previous post) because there is a lot to work with. There are different ways to tell the story I want to tell from the footage I have in part because there IS so much footage to begin with. It’s exciting to come across a certain moment in an interview and think “this would be GREAT coupled alongside this other interview!” It’s similar to the feeling of putting together a large puzzle and the exhilaration of when you start to figure out which pieces go where. You have the side pieces and the corner pieces together (or in my case, interviews that you know can be used to frame the larger story you want the final product to convey) and then from there, it’s a long series of trying to push pieces into certain spots and figuring out what does and does not work.

Transcribing my interviews was akin to flipping all the pieces over to the correct side. It’s still a mess to look at, but at least you sort of have a sense of knowing what you are looking at.

Examples from my transcript and transcript "code" of how I categorized parts of interviews

The next part for me was figuring out how to organize the pieces into categories to make the “pushing pieces into certain spots and figuring out what does and does not work part” a little bit easier. I broke my footage into separate sequences in Premiere categorized by what “type” of footage it was and what type of content was within the footage. For the Chicago episode, were people talking about their memories of growing up and listening to house music? Or were they describing the feeling of house music in a certain part of the interview, but not in others? Was one clip particularly rich in footage that could be used as b-roll? Or sometimes, was the footage even usable at all?

The process of documentary filmmaking for me has been so much about asking questions and seeing how people respond to them. And the editing portion of the project has been no different. Another great advantage I have found in transcribing all of my interviews has been that it has allowed me to see what questions I can group together while editing different interviews together. I’ve done more work as a videographer prior to really trying to stick my hands in documentary and narrative filmmaking, which has benefited me as an editor in the sense that one thing I tried to keep in mind while Giovanna and I shot footage was how to incorporate a doctrine of “shoot for the edit” in the midst of shooting for the answers to questions I was asking of interviewees.

Shooting for the edit more or less means keeping in mind that at the end of the day, no matter how great something looks, you still have to give your editor material to work with that can allow your footage to connect seamlessly. In short, it means getting a lot of coverage on everything. It’s one thing to have a shot of someone on the phone and a shot of them hanging up after their conversation ends. It’s another thing to have a shot of a phone sitting on a table, getting the sound of the phone ringing, in addition to having shots of the person on the phone and the person hanging up. It gives you more room to work with in terms of transitioning from one shot with no phone at all to another shot entirely about a conversation on a phone, and it makes a world of a difference to edit.

HOUSE, as I’ve stated before, has been a great learning experience. Are there moments where I wish I had more coverage of an object or of a person? Most definitely.  But there are also moments in watching the footage where I can see my own growth; in the way I ask questions, the type of questions I ask, and in the understanding between Giovanna and me about what we needed to capture.  The later material is more manageable than the earlier material. It is rewarding to see my own development from the first day of the shoot to the last​.

Last semester I thought I could just jump in with editing by simply looking through my footage and working from there. This semester has been a lot about organizing and making my footage “readable” for myself as an editor. In addition to understanding how editing works for documentary versus how it works for narrative. I’m still moving along, but I think the difference is that now, I have a sense of where I want to go, in part because I’m getting better at understanding how to piece my footage together and because I have worked at figuring out how to read my own handwriting, or in the case of HOUSE, reading my own footage and piecing together the questions I asked in interviews to formulate answers about house music and the house music community.

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.

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. 

Timing Is Everything: Creating The Real and Imagined Timescapes in Film (Mireille)

The passage of time for a character either to portray a “coming of age” or simply to recount the events of a life is a recurrent theme in many films. Unless the piece is a documentary that intentionally depicts the life of a single individual over time, such films most often use will cast actors of different ages to show the passage of time as a character matures. The exception to the rule is Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014), a feature length fictional film which uses the same actors over a twelve year span. Boyhood is unique in its manipulation of cinematic time. It is the only fictional film, which by virtue of using the same actors over an extended period of time, seamlessly meshes together the changes that the characters undergo as part of the script with the physical and emotional changes that the actors endure as a result of change in age and maturity.  

Though Boyhood follows the lives of all of the members of a dysfunctional family it focuses specifically on Mason Jr., the main character. As such, the film follows Mason Jr. from the time he is in elementary school until he starts college. The strength of Boyhood lies in its ability to capture the authenticity of the cultural trends of each of the moments in time in which the film is being shot without forfeiting continuity. The end result is that Boyhood proceeds linearly and seamlessly. Despite the dramatic changes in Mason Jr.’s appearance as well as that of those around him, there are no moments of hesitation, leaps of faith or incongruence. Rather than specifically indicating a change or switch in time, in this film long periods are condensed into fragments which can sometimes take the viewer by surprise. This approach to the depiction of time gives the film an almost mundane and banal feeling. The passing of time in Boyhood captures the normalcy and individual moments of the film's fictional family without a lot of emphasis and interjection from Linklater or even the characters.

Unlike in Boyhood in which the lives of the characters continue to play out regardless of the outcome and the film persists from year to year, Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours (2010) takes the five day experience of a single character and transforms it into an agonizing ninety minute film that provides no respite from anxiety for the audience. In 127 Hours, Boyle recounts the true story of Aron Ralston, a hiker who becomes stranded alone in a canyon after a boulder falls on top of him and traps his arm. Ralston’s suffering in the film is portrayed as a “neo-documentary” as he is able to record his ordeal due to the fact that he had a camera with him during his accident, creating a video diary as events unfolded in real time. In fact, the use of the camera in both films exacerbates the sense of time being manipulated. Although the long shots in Boyhood give the feeling that the camera is acting as an observer over stretches of time, in 127 Hours the camera truly observes Ralston’s attempt to free himself from his situation, and at times is also very intimate. The moments of re-enacted actual footage from Ralston’s personal camera are interspersed with flashbacks of his past memories, which have a hallucinatory feel and give the film a sense of time warping. 

Though Boyhood was shot in segments over a long period of time and is a fictional film, it is still able to provide a feeling of “real time” and authentic setting without so much as a hint of a lack of continuity. On the other hand 127 Hours, which is a true story that by virtue of relying on video documentation must be continuous, still manages to warp time and detach the audience from the “realistic” perception of time. This innovation and genius of manipulation of time in Boyhood, 127 Hours, and many other films rests firmly in the ability to have the audience feel its passage, real or imagined, without lulling us into boredom or disbelief.  

 

Great Things Come In Short Packages: Why A Film Does Not Have To Be Feature Length To Be Memorable (Mireille)

With the Academy Awards being presented this evening, social media and many news outlets are buzzing about the film nominations, and whether one film will sweep all of the awards. These debates are centered on those films that have gained the most notoriety, and one of the types of film that is all too often absent in these discussion and may not even be readily accessible for viewing, is the short film. I do not intend to overgeneralize and say that wide attention is never given to these films, but they rarely receive the spotlight that feature length Oscar nominated films bask in.

Shawn Christensen’s Academy Award winning short film Curfew (2012) is, in my opinion, an extraordinary piece that depicts the typically human struggles, namely one’s own mental health and the frequent dysfunction that exists in families. By packing each frame of the film with rich music, color, and geometry, Christensen successfully conveys the horror of an attempted suicide, the ravages of drug abuse and domestic abuse, the dysfunction of families and the power of the human spirit and enduring love/blood bond between family members. There are full length feature films that are less successful than this short at touching the audience to its very core with a range of emotions that are real and never trite or banal.

The opening sequence of Curfew immediately shocks the viewer and sets the dark psychological tone of the film. At the same time, the hyper pigmented colors and the composition of the frame nudges us to question the reality of the situation. The film begins with a bloodied hand reaching for an old fashioned rotary telephone, painted in the same color tones as the blood tainted hand. The use of high contrast lighting projected on the phone adds to a growing dystopic feel. Christensen, who also plays the principal character Richie, cuts to a high angle shot of himself submerged in a bloodied bathtub while he listens helplessly to the woman on the phone who is pleading with him to take care of her daughter. At this moment we have the confirmation that we are witnessing a suicide attempt. It is, however, depicted in almost a picturesque manner, thanks to Christensen’s specific color palette and positioning of his own body almost as if posing for a painting. To complete the sense of detachment and other worldliness, Christensen incorporates the famous Flower Duet from the opera Lakmé, a piece normally associated with joy.  

As the film progresses, the audience is introduced to the complex relationships between the characters in the film. Richie’s sister, Maggie, has a daughter named Sophia whom Richie does not know but is responsible for taking care of her. The initial dialogue between Richie and Sophia sets the tone for Sophia’s apathy and defiance towards Richie, which is emphasized by Christensen utilizing very strong geometry in many of the shots throughout his film. The characters are initially separated by harsh vertical or horizontal lines which emphasize the divide between Richie and Sophia. However, as the film progresses Sophia begins to cross these constructed cinematographic boundaries to join Richie. These subtle gestures show that Sophia, although a young girl caught in familial and custody troubles, begins to develop a greater understanding and compassion for the situation and is able to sense the longing within Richie. This understanding arrives as a result of incessant questions and answers as well as sequences in the film that lead us to believe one thing that turn out to be another. Christensen juxtaposes the violence and ugliness of the drug world with the innocence of a child and the inevitability of man who loves his sister and niece. He interjects the hallucination of a man on the edge of self-destruction with the whimsy of child’s play.

By the end of the film we have returned to Richie contemplating his suicide in the dystopic and removed setting of his bathroom. The phone, in the same cyclical and rhythmic pattern that drives the film, begins to ring once more as Richie submerges his body into the bloodied water of his bathtub. However this time Richie disconnects the phone in a symbolic move to disconnect himself from the family that has re-entered his life and yet rejected him once more. However, without any warning, Richie violently reconnects the phone, and the film comes full circle with a plea from his sister to watch Sophia except this time it is not a desperate demand, but a conciliatory offer for peace between them.

I would venture to guess that this beautifully crafted and well-acted film that has won multiple awards, including the Oscar, is not on everyone’s short list of favorite or must see films. Why is that? Certainly one reason has to do with its lack of big name producers and actors that wield sufficiently prominent name recognition that draws audience into the light that they effuse. Nevertheless, Curfew is no less worthy for not being a feature film. My challenge to you on the eve of this Oscar night is to give the “shorter guy” a chance. Watch the Academy Award nominees for the short film, whether live action, documentary, or animation, and if you find them worthy perhaps help spread the word by allowing them to ride the crest of the wave of social media that they hardly get swept up in.

Behind the Trigger: Gus Van Sant’s Depiction of Adolescent Violence in Elephant (Mireille)

Over and over we read, hear, and talk about yet another school shooting. In less than one month, two different high school students slaughtered their peers. A handful of films have been made to bring to light the horror of living through such an event often focusing on the psychological disturbance of the assassin. Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) chronicles the events surrounding the massacre of students at a high school by two other students to capture the atrocity of the act and the trauma of the victims and shooters themselves. Though Van Sant provides a backstory for the motivation of the disturbed individuals responsible for the shootings, the film is not devoted to the psychological profile of the murderers. Rather, Van Sant uses cinematography, sound design, and editing to make horrifically real the experiences of the individuals victimized in such a tragedy.

Van Sant loosely based Elephant on the events that occurred during the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Elephant recounts the story of how two high school students plan the massacre of members of their school due to the fact that they have been bullied by other students and disenfranchised by the school administration. The film chronicles the events in a linear fashion by glimpsing at the perspectives of several students as they struggle within the school system. Throughout the film, Van Sant uses repetition not only to emphasize the different manner in which each character in the film interacts with his/her surroundings, but also to create suspense and a sense of chaos. One particular scene that Van Sant repeats again and again shows individual characters walking down a hallway. At first glance these individual hall scenes appear unconnected and do not seem to have any particular point. However, towards the end of the film Van Sant makes clear his intent for the repetition. The audience realizes that all of the characters filmed in the hallway are interconnected and have something in common, namely, they are all victimized by the shooters the film. Van Sant also uses unsettling long takes of the shots that are part of this sequence to accentuate the awkward insecurities of high school and to create an ominous feeling.

Elephant also utilizes an intriguing sound design. The majority of the film is mostly minimalistic diegetic sound that is eerily quiet. This state of “low sound” creates an unsettling mood, but also sets the tone for the banal and muted lifestyle of high school students trying to finish up their day. A few times throughout the film, Van Sant does use music, but not necessarily in a context one would expect. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, which is a morose almost funereal lamentation, is heard during the introduction of one of the less prominent characters; however, the piece is muddied with traditional school setting sounds. The sonata lingers as Van Sant draws out an exceptionally long behind-the-shoulder take of this character until he begins interacting with other students. This same sonata makes a re-appearance, but this time one of the shooters is actually playing the piece on a piano.  The music is not competing with any other sound; however, the shooter makes frequent mistakes while playing. Van Sant’s choice of music creates conflict within the audience as the sonata does not remind us of high school, nor does it seem coherent that a student who is planning the assassination of his peers should be delicately playing the piano. Furthermore, the mistakes that the shooter makes while playing are not random errors from misplaced fingers. Instead, the errors themselves end up creating new chords that result in the piece being played in a completely different key, adding now auditory unease to the already visual tension that builds up in the film.

Van Sant ends Elephant in a particularly hair raising manner. The main shooter discovers two students hiding in a meat freezer in the cafeteria. One of the students is none other than the student was first associated with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. At that moment it becomes clear that Van Sant’s musical choice served as a premonitory tool.  In this final sequence, the frame is almost entirely filled by the placid face of the shooter, who is taunting his victims with a game to determine who he will shoot and is surrounded by hanging meats and carcasses. The audience does not see the two students cornered in this nightmare scenario, but solely hears their voices. The framing of the elements in the freezer creates a very claustrophobic feel that is, however, at once intimate and almost unrealistic. Elephant is brought to a close with Van Sant cutting from this last scene of the shooter in the freezer to the same shot that was utilized in the opening of the film: a neutral sky and benign power lines, a metaphor perhaps for the fact that the horror of gun violence has become almost ordinary in today’s society. Van Sant also does not show us who the shooter chose to kill. He prefers to leave the audience with the horror faced by the victim rather than to glorify the final act of the assassin. 

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.

It's Tough Out There for a Broad (Madison)

Well, folks, this is it. As I am posting this, the final week of classes is winding to a close; exams are being prepped for, parties are being thrown, summer plans solidified. Spring Fair has come and gone; the library is packed with students in the throes of an end-of-semester panic; your timelines are undoubtedly inundated with invitations to oddly-themed a cappella concerts. This spring--the last of my undergraduate career--has been marked by a series of bittersweet benchmarks I can’t help but notice as they pass (far too quickly) by.

 

 

Oh, I found myself thinking the other afternoon, I just skipped the last lecture of the last science course I ever plan on taking (Sorry, Professor Rawlins). And after wrapping up a class on American Women Poets, I was struck by the realization that I might never again have cause to be in room 138 in Gilman hall (and that, drafty as it is, I’ll miss it). I learned, just today, the trick to getting free drinks from the vending machines in Hodson, only to remember that I won’t have time to test out the method.

I am forced, in confronting these Lasts (and the capital L feels proper, here), to turn, also, ahead: if these are the things that I am leaving, what am I heading toward? On the one hand, the answer to this question is simple: I’ll be making my way to grad school in Iowa City (home to an amazing bookstore, plenty of cornfields, and a natural history museum which features a replica of a 10-foot-tall prehistoric sloth). Still, on the other, I have no idea what the next few years will look like.

 

For the first time, I’ll be paying for my own insurance. For the first time, I’ll be more than a two-hour drive away from my mother’s house. For the first time, I’ll be living in a place that is very unlike my hometown (a bit of relevant trivia: the population of Philadelphia is 1.3 million; in Baltimore, it is 623,000; and in Iowa City, the population hovers around a miniscule 73,000).

As I often do when I am forced to forge into unknown territory, I turned to television for answers (answers, of course, that come with a heaping side of escapist fantasy). There are plenty of movies and shows, these days, that explore what it means to be a young woman trying to figure out just what the hell is going on in the world (however you might feel about Lena Dunham, her Girls did pave the way for the moment we find ourselves in now, in which a plethora of lovably-struggling femme millennials fill our screens).

 

I’ve sampled many of them: 2 Broke Girls is a bust for me, feeling somehow stale and forced; New Girl is charming, silly, and consistently entertaining, even if its glory days are somewhat behind it; Jane the Virgin has its appeal, even if it borrows a bit too much from the telenovela to help me navigate my own, admittedly more mundane, life. On the silver screen, Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012), Tiny Furniture (another Dunham offering, this one from 2010), and Adventureland (Mottola, 2009) are worth a watch (Legally Blonde, too, qualifies as a post-college film, in my view!)*

Still, among all these offerings, one show has become my far-and-away favorite, the one I watch over and over again, the one that makes me feel entertained, reassured, and vaguely aroused (a joke), and the one I binged (again) in preparation to leave the Johns Hopkins nest: Broad City.

 

The Comedy Central hit began as a web series in 2009, when Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, the show's creators, stars, and writers, met in New York City while taking classes with the Upright Citizens Brigade; it made its way (with the help of one Amy Poehler) onto television in 2014. It has run for three seasons, with a fourth and fifth upcoming (not soon enough, of course; season 4 isn’t scheduled to run until this August--I am in agony).

In part, my love of the show comes from my identification with Abbi Jacobson. Both she and her character (also named Abbi) grew up on the Philadelphia Main Line, ten minutes away from my childhood home. She went to the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) for her undergraduate degree, which, as most of you know, is only a very short bus ride away from the Homewood campus. She’s not good at public speaking and hopes that her career as an artist will “blow up any day now!” In my preemptively-nostalgic, pre-graduation phase, this is enough to make us soul sisters. Watching her navigate what everyone tells me is the hellscape of your young twenties gives me particular comfort, as if I’d sent a body double ahead of me to test the waters; she seems like she’s doing well--maybe I can, too. 

 

Of course, the appeal of Broad City is much deeper than hometown pride. The show is hilarious; in one episode, Ilana becomes latched onto a garbage truck after trying to wear an industrial chain as a belt; in another, the duo is kicked off of a plane when their MacGyver’d tampon is confused for a bomb. It’s also oddly sweet; it’s clear that Ilana would do anything for her best friend Abbi, including grilling potential one-night-stands about their sexual health, mothering her after the removal of her wisdom teeth, and spending hours tracking down a stolen cell phone.

 

And for all its fluffiness, the show is smart, too, with a feminist sensibility that is always present but never pedantic: the leads are two Jewish women who share a friendship that would make even the best bromance movies jealous, and who talk frankly and frequently about their active sex lives—and not in an I-had-another-steamy-affair way, in an I-just-peed-out-a-condom/I'm-looking-at-my-labia-in-a-Topshop-dressing-room/a-guy-asked-me-to-peg-him kind of way.

It matters to me, too, that Ilana is bisexual, and shows no signs of being killed off. Her liaisons with women are never fetishized, or even addressed as unusual. There is no moment of coming out, no older, predatory lesbian seducing her, and no sense that her friendship with a straight girl is strange or suspect (admittedly, one of the quirks of the pair’s friendship is Ilana’s oft professed love for Abbi—this, though, feels more like a running gag than a comment on the impossibility of friendship between queer and straight women). It is the kind of representation one seldom gets, as a bisexual woman. To see oneself rendered likably and fully on screen, not tokenized or tortured, is an opportunity that is hard to come by; even as Broad City makes me laugh, it gives me the chance to feel real, to take a delight in my queerness that can be otherwise difficult to maintain in the current political climate both at home and abroad. 

Beyond all this, Broad City has a surrealist bent that allows it to stand out amongst other shows of its ilk. The use of non-diegetic sound, fantasy sequences, and absurdist humor make each episode a surprising one: you’re never sure when a giant Bingo Bronson (a stuffed blue cartoon toy) might make an appearance, or when a piece of particularly shocking news will be accompanied by the sounds of a bomb detonating (complete with aftershock and ringing in the ears). It is equally likely that the girls will find themselves at a swanky rooftop cocktail party as in a subway car filled with Hasidic Jewish men or human fecal matter.

 

There is something about this show that defies description; it's difficult to explain why it feels like the suitable topic for my final CinemAddicts post. After all, what can I tell you I’ve learned from watching Broad City? I’m still scared to leave my friends and Baltimore behind; I’m not any closer to understanding how to do my taxes; and it’s true, it isn’t my dream to work as a cleaner in a fitness center or as a temp at a failing startup, so there isn’t much in the way of inspiration to be found in that arena. I suppose, though, I have learned some things: how to sneak an offending BM out of a toilet and into a trash shoot if the power is out and the man I’m crushing on is stopping by for a visit; that “for every ten pounds a man loses, he gains a visual inch”; a recipe for a s’more made with marijuana.

 

I can see, as I’m writing it, how insufficient this list may seem. What I did not include on it, for fear of being sentimental, but what I hope I've made clear throughout this post, is this: Broad City allows me to imagine myself, one, or two, or five years down the line, living a wonderful life. Ok, Abbi and Ilana are messy; ok, they don’t have dream jobs; ok, they live with crummy roommates. But their friendship—the most convincing and compelling female friendship on TV today, in my opinion—is not only enough to sustain the show, but to sustain them through all of the absurd drama of their not-yet-figured-out lives.

So, I’ll finish this Last—my last post on this blog—with a question. Do we have any readers in Iowa City? I’m looking for an Ilana to my Abbi. After all, I hear it’s tough out there for a broad.

 
*I’d like to recognize that this list is hugely incomplete, and (for the most part) only presents a selection of white, straight, middle-to-upper class stories. If you have any recommendations that escape these pitfalls, I’d love to tune in!

The Horror of Romantic Reality (Jaeyoung)

Spoiler warning: plots of The Graduate and Anomalisa discussed.

Unless I am with other people, or if I’m feeling unnaturally brave, I will never watch a horror movie. The suspense, stress, cringe, and anticipation of jump-scares are all too strenuous for me to handle on my own. Therefore, during this Halloween season, I have watched no horror movies to recount on this blog.

Yet the feeling I’ve had watching those movies, the squeamishness, the dread, the “No, don’t make me watch this,” came up unexpectedly in a movie of a totally different genre--The Graduate.

And it wasn’t the part where Mrs. Robinson tries to seduce him, or when Benjamin asks for his hotel room, or when Benjamin brings Elaine to the strip club. No, it was the very last scene, after Benjamin crashes Elaine’s wedding and escapes with her, when their excited, smiling faces fade into regret and disappointment. It was uncomfortable to watch, and I was tempted to stop the movie before it got to the end credit.

Of course, I had questions. What happens next? Where are they going, and what is their future? Benjamin has even less idea of his future than he did in the graduation party, and the life to come will probably be worse than the life he just escaped. In the topic of horror, perhaps this fear can be categorized in the Terror vs. Horror paradigm; Benjamin’s impending fate is terrifying, while his unseen, painfully awkward future would be horrifying.

But one could say that the scene itself is horrific-- (the idea of) Elaine was the closest thing he could get to happiness and normalcy, but he loses her. After ripping through California on car and by foot, he realizes that he became bored of her more quickly than he did with her mother.We see in Benjamin’s face that he truly loses everything.

In Benjamin's defense, who hasn’t daydreamed about their ideal romance, imagining every perfect scene with the person they love? Everyone is their own private filmmaker. The Graduate simply does the dirty deed of realizing these romantic fantasies, only to muddy it up with hopeless reality.

The same romantic idealization is seen in the R-rated stop-motion picture Anomalisa, directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson. In a world where everyone is voiced by Tom Noonan, Customer Service expert Michael Stone finally meets Lisa Hesselman, a woman with a unique voice. In his hotel room, he appears completely infatuated with her, relieved that the many years of grim mundanity are finally coming to an end. In fact, after Lisa sings an unimpressive rendition of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” she exclaims, “Oh my God, are those tears?”

And to no surprise, Michael falls into the same trap Benjamin did--he shoves his hopes and dreams into a stranger he’d only recently met. And he faces great disappointment, as Lisa starts to displease him and sound more like Tom Noonan (aka everyone else). Unlike Benjamin, however, Michael attempts to shape her back into his idealized woman, chiding her for letting food hang out of her mouth and telling her she’s “too controlling.” But Lisa’s charm is irreparably broken, and Michael’s only hope in life is lost. The sunlight in the room becomes obnoxiously bright, suggesting that (the idea of) Lisa has just been a meaningless dream. Just when life was looking up for Michael, that one breakfast scene thrusts Michael back to misery.

But Anomalisa actually has obvious elements of horror. Not only are the puppets somewhat unnerving (unlike normal puppets, their faces appear pasted onto their heads), but also there is a nightmare sequence in which everyone, from the hotel manager to the staff members to Lisa’s friend, are “all one person" and are after Michael. The hotel grows ominously dark as Michael (who at one point drops his animatronic face) frantically plans his escape. But even in his nightmare, Michael has (the idea of) Lisa to hold on to, a last hope.

And then he wakes up, and (the idea of) Lisa is lost. Reality becomes worse than nightmare.

Women have no responsibility to conform to a man’s idealization. But we (as in mainstream audience) still expect romantically-satisfying endings. We are primed with movies and shows that have protagonists “winning the girl” or rekindling a waning relationship. Hollywood constantly peddles these opiates, and when movies like The Graduate or Anomalisa come around, we're kicked in the gut.

So who needs ghosts or zombies for a cinematic scare? With the right dose of wishful thinking and a swift counter-punch of reality, anything could be a horrifying thriller.

New York, New York (Tori)

In my opinion, New York City is truly incomparable.  I lived there until I was eleven years old, and although I now proudly call Boston home and am a big admirer of Baltimore, my current city, there is something about New York City that I can't shake.  I am definitely not the only one who feels this way.  New York City has long been an object of artistic fascination.  Artists, writers, musicians, actors, and, most definitely, filmmakers have consistently used New York City as their muse.

After watching Annie Hall for the first time last year, I came away electrified by the way Woody Allen was able to represent New York City on the screen.  So much more than just a location, the city becomes a character itself; it comes alive through the camera and deepens our understanding of the film's other characters, as well.  In short, I loved it, and it got me thinking: how do different films engage with New York City?  How do different directors depict New York in their films?  Are there similarities in their depictions?  Differences?  How do depictions of New York City change through time?

I started my New York City film journey with the 1949 film version of the 1944 Broadway musical On the Town.  Initially based on a Jerome Robbins ballet, with music by the renowned Leonard Bernstein, the musical made a big name for itself and is still widely performed today.  The film, which features the iconic Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, and directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen, clearly depicts New York City as a utopia.  The story follows three sailors, Gabey, Ozzie, and Chip, who have only 24 hours in New York City before they must head back to sea.  They each look for, and ultimately find, love in the bustling city, and after their escapades conclude, they head back to sea, while three new sailors, fresh off the ship, embrace the city just as the original three characters did, suggesting a cycle of fulfilled hopes and dreams.  The opening of the film stuck with me most.  With the euphoric "New York, New York" backing them, the three sailors visit all of the famous New York City landmarks: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Central Park, etc.  New York City truly glistens in front of them; it holds the promise of love and grand adventure.  To the three sailors, and to us viewers, New York City is quite simply "a wonderful town."

Woody Allen is known for his obsession with New York City.  While Annie Hall provides a good example of this captivation, his 1979 film Manhattan is considered his ultimate ode to his beloved town.  Manhattan follows 42-year-old Isaac, played by Allen, and his romantic relationships with, first, the 17-year-old Tracy, and subsequently Mary, the woman with whom his best friend was having an affair.  Just like in Annie Hall, New York City is displayed prominently in the background of the story.  As in On the Town, the opening montage provides a perfect starting point for analysis.  Set to George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," this montage does contrast with the jubilant movie musical's opening montage.  Each shot is undeniably breathtaking, but the shots almost contradict themselves, in a way.  There are some more delicate shots, such as streets at night in the snow and a couple on a balcony with the city lights behind them, but then there are also some more formidable, powerful shots of infrastructure, namely skyscrapers and bridges.  Allen's voiceover complies with this pattern.  Isaac attempts to write the first chapter of a book about his relationship with the city, but struggles to find the description that feels right.  "Beautiful women," "street-smart guys," "decay of contemporary culture," "drugs, loud music," "garbage," "tough and romantic" ...nothing is satisfactory.  Finally, he concludes with, "New York was his town and it always would be."  No longer simply the shining beacon of promise and utopia New York provides for the three sailors, New York is more difficult to describe in Allen's view, and he resorts to claiming ownership of it without further explanation.  The ending sequence does a perfect job of illustrating this feeling, as well.  As Isaac and Tracy part ways, we are given an image of the New York City skyline that, along with the score, feels triumphant and beautiful, but ominous and ambivalent at the same time.  In this way, New York City mirrors Woody Allen's character and his situation.  Isaac's future is strikingly ambiguous at the end of the film, just like our feelings about New York City.

Through the comparison of On the Town and Manhattan, we see a change in the portrayal of New York City.  No longer just a place of promise, achieved goals, and happy endings, Woody Allen suggests complication and contradiction in New York.  To end my exploration of New York City films, I looked to an extremely difficult period in New York's history: post 9/11.  I was only four years old on September 1, 2001, and thus I have minimal recollection of the event's occurrence and its immediate aftermath.  However, after taking an English course last year entitled "Novels After 9/11," I now know more about the huge outpouring of art that occurred in response to the tragedy as artists attempted to make sense of what happened and help those around the world make sense of it, as well.  For my post 9/11 film, I looked to Kenneth Lonergan's 2011 film Margaret, which, though it was released a significant amount of time after the tragedy, thematically captures the feeling of living in a post 9/11 New York society.  The story begins by introducing us to Lisa, a high school girl living a normal, uninterrupted life in New York City, until she accidentally distracts a bus driver, resulting in the death of a pedestrian.  The story follows Lisa's attempt to figure out how to live with this disaster.  There don't seem to be a lot of answers in this film; what stands out are the complexities of a world and how those complexities are attempted to be dealt with.  This is exactly what life in New York City is after 9/11: having to suddenly figure out how to live in an altered world.  The ending sequence illustrates this idea well.  The film ends in an iconic New York performance space: Lincoln Center.  This choice of venue suggests a connection between New York City and art.  After Lisa enters the space, we are given fragmented shots of different people in the audience, all united through the performance they are about to watch.  This choice is poignant in that it suggests a responsibility art forms have to unite a population and provide an outlet for suffering and grief after a tragedy.  Lisa and her mother, despite their strained relationship, unite at the end of the scene in support of each other as they attempt to deal with the complicated world they both inhabit.  In this way, Margaret actually functions as that support.  Margaret provides us with an image of somehow learning to live with disaster, no matter how difficult that may be.

The change New York undergoes through these three films raises many questions.  Is it possible to return to the view of New York City as a utopia?  Will New York films ever again conclude with perfectly happy endings?  In these three films, we see a loss of innocence and romanticism about the city.  It's almost as if New York comes of age through these three films; it grows up and is exposed to more and more complexities and ambiguities surrounding the future.  If there is one thing that remains perfectly clear, it is that New York City remains an object of fascination for different filmmakers throughout the years.  That is something I don't think will ever change.

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 #5 (Hee Won)

Production diary 5

         In my last post, I talked about the disasters that surrounded our miscalculation of the cherry blossoms’ peak bloom. We needed the cherry blossoms but cherry blossoms were blooming earlier than planned. We were not ready to shoot but we went down to DC anyways thinking that we are going to figure something out when we got there. We did, but it wasn’t easy.

         Deciding whether or not we should go to DC to film cherry blossoms was not easy. We did not have any of our actors with us. In our script, Ghunja looks at the cherry blossoms, and in  our storyboard, we have a back shot of her looking at the fully bloomed cherry blossoms. As I mentioned in the previous post, we called our actor to ask if she would be available, but she could not come down on such short notice. We brainstormed what we could possibly to do to make this work. One solution we thought of was to get a body-double. We knew it was not the best idea, since the a body double would be very noticeable to the audience, with the numerous tracking shots of our actor’s back that throughout the film. However, we decided to look for someone anyway, a 5’6 female who wears size 8 shoes. After sending hundreds of Facebook messages we managed to find one person who could match. However, she was only available from 11am to 3pm which was a very narrow time window, considering we had to drive to DC, park our car, get the equipment out, film everything, and drive back.

Another big problem was that we didn’t have anyone to help us shoot. We needed at least one or two people to help us carry equipment but everyone was busy or had class. If we were to go to DC, it would be just Sue and me and we would have to be back by 4pm because we both had classes that we could not miss. Also, we could not get the digital back up camera that we wanted. Although our we are shooting on 16mm, we wanted to get some shots on digital just in case. We were thinking about using either the Black Magic or Canon C300 for the back up camera but neither of them were available for that date. We were able reserve a Canon 5D Mark II in the end, but we weren’t ecstatic because we wanted a camera that could shoot 4K.

         We could not make a decision right away because there were so many complications. We only had five hours to do everything and it seemed almost impossible. On Wednesday night, after exchanging a couple of serious texts we decided to go to DC by ourselves. We knew that things would not go smoothly but we thought that it would still be worth it. Because we could not guarantee that we would be back before 3pm, we told our body double not to come. We decided to get a lot of POV shots and B roll of the cherry blossoms. Before I went to sleep, I packed everything that I needed for the shoot in my living room and wrote down all the shots that I needed. I was tossing and turning all night and get much sleep because I was terrified.  

         As soon as I woke up the next morning, I headed to Gilman 35 to check all the equipment that I needed. I checked the cameras, batteries, tripods and anything that could possibly go wrong. Just looking at all the equipment Sue and I would have to carry made me want to cry, but I took out all the equipment one by one thinking that everything was going to be okay. We had all the equipment loaded in the car by 11:30 am and headed for DC.

         By 12pm we were very happy with the situation. The weather was great, we were on schedule and nothing was wrong with the equipment. Because everything was going so well, I started to feel uneasy. Sue told me to shut up when I told her that something would go wrong during the shoot.

         When we got to the National Mall, we realized that I was right after all. We thought that the location would not be crowded because it was 3pm on a Thursday, but we could not have been more wrong. The streets were filled with tourists and none of the parking lots had spaces. This was a huge problem because we did not have PAs to control pedestrians as we were filming and we needed couple of wide shots that looked pretty empty. On top of that, the traffic was horrible because there were so many cars and people walking on the roads. We lost about an hour just looking for parking and we were getting nervous because it was already almost 2pm when we miraculously found a place to park. We needed to shoot everything in an hour with all the equipment that we had.

  

       In the end, we got some B-roll of the cherry blossoms and got some footage from near the tidal basin area. It was very challenging and time-consuming with so many people trying to take selfies and group photos near us. It was also exhausting because we had a very heavy camera, a tripod, and equipment. It was a hassle, but we managed to get the most important scenes on film. We wanted to shoot more but we had to get back to Homewood as soon as possible and we were already late. During the shoot, we had some issues with the gate; we saw dust particles in the frame when we were shooting towards the end and could not figure out exactly where it was. We won’t find out how everything turned out until late April when we get our film is processed, so it is very frightening and thrilling at the same time.

         We left the parking lot at about 3:15pm, thinking that we will probably be 20 minutes late for class. We were wrong again. The traffic was so bad that it was 5pm when we got back to Homewood campus. We were an hour late for class.

         One most important takeaway from this hectic shoot was that you just have to be prepared for the worst situations. I have three more shooting days left, in less than 10 days, and one of them requires scenes that take place on a moving train. How exciting. (but actually not).

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!

It’s a Small (Claymation) World After All (Nicola)

“Huh?” Coraline stops short at the sight of her ‘Other House,’ looming before her. She turns to her feline companion as if to verify that they had indeed departed from that location not minutes before. “But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?” she asks.

The cat replies in a drawl that implies the obvious: “Walk around the world.”

“Small world…”

 Based on a novel by Neil Gaiman, Coraline is a dark fantasy that revolves around a young girl named Coraline (not Caroline, as she is often forced to remind her neighbors). Upon moving to Oregon with her deadbeat, overworked parents, Coraline finds herself bored, neglected, and missing her old home. In search of adventure or, at the very least, something to interrupt the unrelenting monotony of the overcast Oregon afternoons, Coraline discovers a small door leading to a parallel world. In this ‘Other World’ everything is the same, but better – better food, better neighbors, better garden, and best yet, parents that actually seem to care about their daughter.

Yes, everything is better – except, that is, for the eyes. Everyone in this ‘Other World’ has buttons for eyes.

Now, if an animated doll staring at you with glazed-over, black button eyes isn’t creepy enough to give you the heebie-jeebies, it gets worse. It soon becomes disturbingly clear that the ‘Other World’ is nothing but a construction, created for the purpose of stealing children’s souls. In a danse macabre, the child ghosts of former victims describe the methods of the ‘Other Mother’:

She spied on our lives,

through the little doll's eyes,

And saw that we weren't happy.

So she lured us away,

with treasures and treats,

and games to play!

Gave all that we asked –

yet we still wanted more –

So we let her sew the buttons.

She said that she loved us,

But she locked us here

And ate up our lives.

Indeed, Coraline Jones is in a very small world. The ‘Other Mother’ has created a realm that centers entirely around our little blue-haired protagonist. But Coraline exists in a small world in more ways than one, for as it turns out, the 'Other Mother’ has quite a lot in common with a certain director with a penchant for imbuing inanimate objects with life.

At the time of its release in 2009, Henry Selik’s film, Coraline was the longest stop action film in existence. Now, when it takes an entire week for a fully staffed crew to produce approximately 90 seconds of footage, you can be pretty sure that the selected medium was chosen for a reason (masochistic tendencies aside). Stop action - Claymation in particular – generally involves the incremental manipulation of figures to act out a story. In the case of Coraline, a 140,000 square ft. warehouse was transformed into the 150 sets that compose Coraline’s world. Extensive research was done on the real-world locations portrayed so the film would appear stylized but accurate, the set was filled with hand-crafted dolls (fun fact: a woman named Althea Croem was hired purely for the purpose of knitting miniature sweaters. Sometimes her needles were no thicker than a single human hair), and the film was shot using the dual camera technique to create a 3D look.

Hmmmmm. Intense research on outside source material, a miniature world, dolls operated by unseen hands and made three dimensional… Sound familiar?

The medium of the film reflects the story itself. Pretty neat, huh?

Now, I will say, I have mixed feelings about Coraline – there are certain aspects of the film that I adore and others that bug the heck out of me. I think I’ve already expressed how much I enjoy the self-awareness of the film, but more than that, I love the stylization. Coraline is a film that knows what it is – it has a great sense of humor, it’s exceptionally creative, and the soundtrack is so good that I’m pretty sure I bought within 24 hours of leaving the theatre. That being said, it’s pretty hard-hitting when it comes to the ‘neglected child’ thing and doesn’t do nearly enough work when it comes to humanizing Coraline’s real parents. What’s more, the ending (a neighborhood garden party on a sunny afternoon) rings with the falsity of a fairytale – a tone which seems quite out of place given the general propensities of the piece. It feels forced, tied up with a bright red bow and thrown at the reader as if to say: “Here. Have a happy ending.” It blatantly ignores the fact that basically nothing has changed in Coraline’s real life and, in a day or two, Coraline’s parents will go back to their work as usual. Not to mention the fact that Coraline’s probably going to suffer from deep psychological issues. Oh, and don’t forget the three children who were murdered and had their eyes gouged out. But sure, let’s end the film with a garden party!

Gee, thanks.

I would tend to say, if you’re going to go the route of a dark fantasy, you should commit. The film does such an amazing job of constructing this incredibly unsettling aura, but all that work goes right out the window in the last five minutes. The 'Other Mother' is possessed by a desire to have things 'just so.' Consequently, even though her world is supposedly perfect, it has a wrongness to it – it feels too contrived. The movie itself (intentionally or not) possesses the same wrongness and a lack of natural progression that is positively infuriating. That is not to say the film is not enjoyable (in fact, I highly recommend it) but it does leave certain things to be desired. 

BONUS: I also highly recommend perusing the CoralineTheMovie YouTube channel. They have some wonderful stuff in there about the making of the film. It’s fascinating!
Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FfFaj2eRcQ

Stripped Bare and on the Brink: Let the Right One In (Nicola)

There are a variety of myths surrounding the sanguinary creature we call the vampire. While the name and the minutia of the lore varies from region to region, the overarching theme remains consistent: the vampire, an undead creature of mythos, sustains its presence in the physical world by consuming the life-force of the living. In most cases, this requires feasting on the victim’s blood. Other characteristics of the vampire include transformative abilities, regenerative properties, super strength, and an aversion to daylight; today’s popular culture tends to pick and choose from the traditional attributes, combining them at their leisure. Admittedly, some interpretations take greater liberties than others (I’m looking at you, Twilight), but one rule remains almost universally acknowledged: a vampire cannot gain access to a home without an invitation. The establishment of such a law works to maintain a kind of balance – a buffer, even – between good and evil. As long as the victims remain self-aware, they stay master of their own domain, secure in a place that evil cannot penetrate. Unfortunately, that balance is delicate and easily tipped in the favor of the darkness.

Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In is a Swedish vampire film that centers around the lives of two young outsiders. Though one is a vampire and the other is not, neither seems to be welcome in the world of humans. Our main characters hover on the brink of society, of adolescence, and of evil – looking in, waiting for an invitation to forge ahead.

The first of our two main characters is a young boy named Oskar. Oskar is an outsider in every sense of the word. The scrawny, pale-faced youth is bullied in school, shipped back and forth between two inattentive parents, and is left largely to his own devices. In his free time, Oskar indulges in the fantasy of stabbing his bullies and enjoys the morbid hobby of scrapbooking murder cases. Though these eccentricities indicate a worrisome dark side, his pitiful nature draws sympathy from the audience and paints his as a victim of his situation.

It is during one of his role-playing sessions that Oskar encounters Eli, a girl who looks to be about his age, has impossibly large eyes, walks barefoot in the snow, and smells of death. Eli is a vampire. For Eli’s part, she is well established in her way of life – she’s been twelve for a long time now and has managed successfully thus far. However, Eli, too, is in a precarious situation – she requires the protection of a faithful servant willing to acquire blood for her meals, and is therefore reliant on another for survival. Regardless of how long she has been twelve, she remains twelve at heart and possesses no desire to murder people. Cursed by her very nature, Eli is lonely.

The backdrop for this film – a beautifully white, minimalistic landscape doused in a wintry light, is also one that evokes feelings of lonliness and unease. The film’s palette is faded, void of bright colors save for the vivid red of blood that is guaranteed to set the viewer’s stomach churning. For all intent and purposes, the film itself seems frozen, each frame carefully composed with a steady hand. Like the main characters, the town itself is removed and forlorn, arrested in that moment of quiet before chaos. Alfredson has created a motionless, crystalline world that teeters on the precipice of danger, ready to slip off the edge and shatter at the slightest provocation.

Let the Right One In is a horror film that extends beyond the boundaries of its genre, and into the realm of social commentary. The inner-working of the characters takes precedence over the presence of monsters. Adolescence, dark inner desires, and companionship in shared loneliness are all themes explored in this piece of cinema that is delightfully cold and touching at the same time.

 

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

Kids These Days: Movies that embody generation Y (Ian)

Members of the millennial (Y) generation (myself included) have garnered divisive opinions from our predecessors, receiving epithets ranging from “the go-getter generation” to “generation Me,” and I think the contrast works well to capture the nuances of today’s young adults.  Meanwhile, growing in tangent with my generation is the popular perception of film as academia, as a medium that can host rich meaning and invite formalistic study.  Here, I’ll be dabbling a bit in both film as academia and anthropological study, turning to three different movies I feel best capture what it “is” to be a millennial.   

 

1. The Social Network (2010), David Fincher

Fincher’s 2010 dramatic masterpiece The Social Network perhaps most neatly captures the growing horrors of generation Y’s transition into adulthood--that is, the compulsive need to stand out from the crowd on an increasingly impossible scale.  Specifically, Social highlights the trendy mentality wherein if you don’t create something that changes everyone’s lives forever, then you somehow have failed to live up to your potential.  Not only does this mentality apply immense pressure to its subscribers, it also exposes the sad reality of generation Y’s entitlement problem, with every member of the generation believing themselves capable of changing the world.

Then, of course, there’s the matter of online obsession and social networking, a defining trait unique to generation Y.  Facebook dominates the lives of Social’s characters as much as it does my own, and those around me.  The film’s concluding moments--in which the now friendless Mark Zuckerberg sits glued to his laptop, refreshing his ex-girlfriend’s Facebook profile, desperately hoping she’ll accept his friend request--are perhaps some of the most gently pathetic moments in recent cinema, and an allusion to how social media is increasing feelings of loneliness and depression across the world.

True, the film doesn’t portray every aspect of this generation’s college life accurately--I don’t go to Harvard, but “supermodel hot, over-sexed student body” is not a descriptor I typically associate with the place--but sex isn’t the main point of the film, so the misrepresentation doesn’t feel like a deal-breaker.  In the end, The Social Network nails its true message: that the software designed to bring our generation closer together has in fact separated us like never before.

 

2. The Bling Ring (2013), Sofia Coppola

Sofia Coppola’s examination of LA youth bacchanalia defies narrative convention at every turn, which is perhaps why the film received such a middling, lukewarm reception upon its initial release.  Perhaps audiences expected Coppola to tell her tale of kid robbers ripping off celebrities with the constant high energy and tension of a proper crime thriller, not unlike Fincher does in Social.  Instead, while the film maintains an energy throughout, it’s of a more contemplative nature, one that sits back and observes its subjects with cool detachment.  While the critics’ consensus on Rotten Tomatoes interpreted this detachment as a “failure to delve beneath the surface of its shallow protagonists’ real-life crimes," I’d argue that Coppola’s emphasis on her characters’ shallow materialism is her way of telling us she did delve beneath the surface, only there was nothing “deeper” to find.  

The structure of the film supports this idea of an absence of depth.  The repetition of robberies makes them become so flaccid that the audience becomes desensitized to them, to the point where theft of others’ possessions is the norm.  Moreover, it is dizzying to hear the kids speak, but in an entirely different way than in The Social Network; whereas Social’s college extraordinaires spout line after polished line of acerbic wisdom or tragic naivete (sometimes both at once), the kid members of The Bling Ring struggle to articulate the silliest of non-ideas in phrases that almost always include the words “energy,” “universe,” “bitch,” and “like.”  In short, Coppola’s film doesn’t simply portray the kids’ apathy towards their own alarming greed, it embodies it.

I have no idea what Paris Hilton hoped to achieve by allowing Coppola to use her actual house to re-enact some of the burglaries, but boy does the setting effortlessly drive Coppola’s point home.  Paris apparently lives in a veritable shrine to herself, the walls decked with framed pictures of her own magazine covers, her furniture embellished with throw pillows wearing her face.  In the world of The Bling Ring the deepest one ever looks is at themselves, never within themselves.

Celebrity obsession, materialism, superficiality, jealousy, a sociopathic lack of respect for others; I’ll be damned if these traits aren’t all symptomatic of the Y generation, and Coppola displays them all with haunting accuracy.

 

3. Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), Stephen Chbosky

I felt compelled to include Perks of Being a Wallflower more out of a sense of obligation than personal desire, with my hesitation stemming from my belief that its representation of youth culture feels more manufactured than other films here.  Specifically, Social and Bling seem to work from the ground up, in that they observe the world around them, digest their findings, and then produce opinionated films that have something important to say with honest voices.  Meanwhile, Perks seems, in typical box-office/best-selling-novel fashion, to work more top-down, in that it caters to how its target demographic wants to perceive itself, rather than how it actually is.  The protagonists are all wounded but dignified, disdainful of athletes, cerebral, and artsy--in a word, hipsters (although they’d never accept the label).  The film (and novel) fancies itself a modern day Catcher in the Rye, and hopes to attract anyone interested in exiting “the mainstream”, well aware that being “in the mainstream” is becoming increasingly unpopular.  Admittedly, it did its job--the film is inspiring and enjoyable to watch despite its penchant for manipulation.  More importantly, it’s an important text to consider when defining generation Y because it shows what the generation aspires to be.

 

Ultimately, the films that best capture what I see and hear from my peers around me, as well as what I think and produce on a daily basis, are quite bleak.  The Social Network, The Bling Ring, and Perks of Being a Wallflower highlight, both in content and in structure, generation Y’s narcissism, self-indulgence, detachment from reality, and increasing attachment to living online.  The good news is, although grim, the films manage to highlight some of the generation’s strongest qualities, as well: the limitless ambition and creativity portrayed in The Social Network, or the high esteem placed on introspection, literature, and art as desirable traits in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  Even The Bling Ring, which undoubtedly presents the generation at its worst, is at least able isolate some of the essential problems of today’s youth culture, showing that our downfalls are not too numerous and severe so as to overwhelm.  As screwed up as kids these days are, we just might make it out okay.

 

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. 

Time in Movies, Movies in Time (Ian)

 

Some years just aren’t good to moviegoers.  2004 birthed few movies worth mentioning (Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind, Kill Bill Vol. 2, and Mean Girls practically finish the list).  Conversely, some years are great to film--2007 for instance saw There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly all grace the silver screen.

Fortunately, the stars aligned, and 2014 was a stellar year in film.  We got Boyhood, and Birdman, and Foxcatcher, and Whiplash, and Nightcrawler, AND The Babadook--the list goes on, but I’ll stop there.

Funny enough, the good years seem to come with a theme that stretches across their respective filmographies (coincidence? self-projection?).  2007 saw a type of rejuvenation of the “lonely man” archetype popularized by Paul Schrader’s “Night Worker” series of films.  Upon reflection, 2014 saw many of its films measure their ability to be “revolutionary” in hours, and minutes, and seconds; they pushed cinematic boundaries by manipulating how films portray time.

Boyhood seems like the most obvious example of a film representing time in a “new” way, and its deceiving because of it.  The film has received widespread acclaim for its portrayal of twelve years in a family’s life, filmed across twelve years real-time.  Certainly there is technically no other film like it, simply because no other film was produced over a twelve-year period.  And while it is interesting to see Boyhood’s Mason and co. age twelve years throughout the span of three hours (and in the process to relive moments in time like the book release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows unstaged), beneath the glamour of the movie’s unprecedented production schedule, it’s time trick is just that--a trick.  Obviously the movie examines time, but not uniquely, like it wants you to believe; rather, it examines time like anyone else would--like everyone else has to.

Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Birdman stands at the opposite end of the spectrum, presenting time in a highly formalistic way.  Whereas time passes in Boyhood it flows in Birdman, making it the truly unique interpretation of the fourth dimension (despite what the former would have you believe).  The camera floats continuously not just through space, but time as well, trimming away the “fat” of the narrative and conflating scenes of “artists” producing “art” into a pressure-cooker that eventually reaches its breaking point and bursts into surrealism and absurdity.

Somewhere in the middle lies the lesser-seen Locke, directed by Steven Knight and starring Tom Hardy.  The film’s narrative takes place across one single, 84 minute car ride, with the camera never leaving the car.  Locke is the only passenger, meaning he is the only character ever on screen, and speaks to other characters only via his car’s speaker phone.  By the end of Locke’s hour-and-a-half drive into London he has successfully annihilated his professional and personal lives.  While the premise isn’t exactly “cinematic”, by staying with Locke in-real time the film lets the viewer witness every second of the man’s disintegration.

Way back in the third paragraph I mentioned that the “theme” I draw from a given year’s filmography may be self-projected rather than widely felt, but that issue becomes irrelevant the more I think about it.  After all, studying the films in 2014 through the lens of time has been fruitful, if only for my sake.  Even if it’s “uniqueness” is ultimately glib, by making a spectacle of the objectively mundane maturation process, Boyhood makes everyone’s past seem special, or somehow larger-than-life; a treat to be savored, rather than a given to be endured.  Meanwhile, the blurring of time and space in Birdman layers spectacle on spectacle until eventually absurdity replaces reality--not a bad representation of life in a world with increasingly bleaker political and social climates that make it ever-harder to understand.  Locke emphasizes that no moment should be wasted, because in every moment lies the potential for life-changing events.

Birdman manipulated time to make art look absurd; 2014, however, used time to make films that were great.  Tit for tat, the films produced in 2014 cement it as one of the richest years recent history.  Let’s hope for an equally profound (and thematic) 2015.

 

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.

Freedom and Future in The Shawshank Redemption (Elizabeth)

This past summer, I watched a movie that I had always meant to see but never gotten around to—the wonderful prison drama The Shawshank Redemption. People had told me that it was one of the best movies of all time, and it did not disappoint. However, I’m glad that I waited to see it until I was a rising junior, filled with worries about what I’m going to do after I graduate, because The Shawshank Redemption is a powerful message about creating one’s own future.

Characters who rely on others to control their lives, especially those who rely on the system, inevitably end up screwed. This is obvious from the very beginning of the film, where our protagonist Andy is tried in a courtroom entirely against him, which refuses to hear a word that he says and have already decided he is guilty. One of the first scenes of the prison is that of a routine parole hearing for Red, the narrator. He smiles, acts charming, gives the judges every word that they want to hear, and is denied without an explanation.

The most poignant and tragic case is that of the elderly Brooks, who served half a century of honest time in the Shawshank State Penitentiary. After spending a lifetime following the rules of the prison and making a place for himself in the library, he is released to a world that has changed immutably from his youth and a lifestyle that he just can’t adjust to. Brooks’ new life is a just another prison, with a suspicious, warden-like boss and a cramped, claustrophobic cell of an apartment. Used to finding freedom through work in the prison library, he is trapped in despair by actual freedom and commits suicide.

Tommy is still young enough to escape prison life, and has a family with a young child waiting for him outside. However, he has resigned himself to a life of failure. It takes Andy’s coaching for him to be willing to try for a GED and a chance of an honest life, and even then he quits in rage and forces Andy to retrieve his test from the trash to show him that he has passed. He refuses to fight for his future alone, and Andy, someone with much less to hope for, has to show him the light. Tommy’s downfall comes when he provides evidence to the warden of Andy’s innocence, and is killed for it. Despite his own work, and Andy’s, his future is taken away from him by his reliance on the prison authorities and their corruption, as well as his desire to pay back Andy. He is unable to act independently, and dies for it.

The only characters who are free at the end are Andy and Red. Andy learns early on to manipulate the system to his benefit, not relying on it but making it rely on him and give him power. When the Sisters attack him, instead of reporting it to the guards Andy makes the guards need him by doing their taxes. On their own, the guards extract brutal revenge on the leader. And, most importantly, for his entire prison stay he makes his famous tunnel to escape, as his honest attempts at release only get him punished. The whole time he is trying to find freedom on his own terms and he succeeds.

This is what gives Red the ability to find his own freedom. When he has his next parole hearing, he has given up on the system and launches into a screed against the prison and the idea of redemption, and this is what finally gets him paroled. The system only lets him out once he stops trying to get the system to let him out, because it is not meant to reward those who seek freedom. It is implied that the despairing Red would face the same fate as Brooks, and he is only saved by the fact that Andy left him some money, a letter, and, most important of all, a choice. Red himself must choose to buck the system, break parole, and abandon everything for a different future. Unlike Brooks who only followed what the system allowed, and Tommy who lets Andy make his decisions, Red is able to pick his own path and work towards his own future, and that is what makes him a free man.

His Homecoming (Abby)

As much as I’ve written about the concept of “home” through my own experience, and what this place means to me, the space seems to have pervaded the entirety of my experience this year, including an infiltration into other projects.

For three years, fellow JHU student Michael Nakan and I have been working on a documentary based in Baltimore, which has served as our home during our education here; Mike is from London and I’m from Minnesota.

Originally the project was research-heavy, focusing on the juvenile system in Baltimore and Maryland as a whole. As it developed, we met two young men with experience in the juvenile system: Vernon Crowffey and Justin Felder. The film and project shifted focus to provide insight through their personal experiences, and their stories are now at the forefront of the piece.

As we wrapped up the project this year, most of our time was spent on editing (a very long process for documentaries, especially those with observational elements), and I spent most of my time in editing with Justin, pictured above, and his family. We’ve been in contact with Justin’s mother for several years, but I was only able to meet Justin once, in July of 2013.

Justin was on house arrest when I met him, after being shuffled through the juvenile justice system for nearly a year due to fights and other conflicts he had while in detention. In the juvenile system, sentences restart with each move to a new facility. Justin’s sentence was therefore much longer than expected, and as a result, he spent his 18^th birthday, along with several holidays, in detention.

I’ve had a very close relative face the sentence of house arrest, and I know that this experience can be a strange one; you are home, but your home becomes a place of confinement, only a place of comfort in that it is not jail or detention. Facing mental health issues simultaneously, it was clear that the transition was not an easy one for Justin. Only a few months after getting his ankle bracelet removed, he was arrested as an adult and convicted of first-degree assault over an incident involving a gifted tattoo gun, and is currently serving a ten-year sentence in the Baltimore County Detention Center. He’s due out on parole later this year.

My limited experience with Justin face-to-face serves to note how briefly he’s actually been out of detention and incarceration in the past few years; it has only been a few months over the past summer, which makes me wonder about how he thinks about his own home and family. Justin is an 18 year-old incarcerated in BCDC. When I was 18 I was also away from home, but for college, halfway across the country. He and I represent two very different experiences of what it means to come home, a strange thing to consider given that Justin is a subject of our documentary; being so close in age to him, seeing him as a subject has sometimes been difficult, and I connect with his story more than I might have thought. The connection may sprout from my experience with my relative, or from an idea as abstract (yet common) as coming home. My relationship with his story brings a whole slew of other questions to the forefront, but what I can take away from the experience of making both films is that coming home is oftentimes far from smooth, a displacement, even, but one that we might long for regardless, if for no other reason than as an escape from confinement into a more comfortable form of it.  

 

Spin-off is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: the Evolution of a Young Norman Bates in the TV series Bates Motel (Helen)

(image licesensed for use in accordance with WikiMedia Commons)

 

    A year ago A&E launched their ambitious television adaptation of film’s most notorious killer, Norman Bates. Fifty-three years after the premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic thriller Psycho (1960), the concept of the television prequel was met with mixed reviews. The beloved film already suffered three sequels and one truly awful shot-for-shot remake, starring none other than Vince Vaughn. When I had first heard about this television adaptation I was reluctant to watch another ham-fisted attempt at tapping into the original thrill of unraveling the mystery of the Bates Motel. What these sequels failed to do was to get at the heart of what made Psycho interesting: Who/or what made Norman Bates kill? The real terror of the film that lingered long after the credits was not the murder, but the maddening question of the interrogation. Why?

 

    The series begins with a seventeen year old Norman Bates and his young attractive mother Norma, leaving their home in Arizona and Norman’s recently deceased father, for the sleepy town of White Pine Bay and the newly branded Bates Motel. The setting remains intentionally ambiguous in time in the beginning of the pilot, toying with our sensibilities opening on a black and white film on Norman’s television and later transitioning to Norma’s vintage Mercedes. Although it becomes a clear that it's a modern adaptation as soon as Norman takes out his IPhone at the bus stop. This was my first pause for concern. A modern adaptation that was also a prequel for Psycho seemed unnecessarily complex, and perhaps a forced attempt to distance this story from the inspiration. The show similarly has a love-hate relationship with references to the Hitchcock classic. From similar shot compositions, hiding the first casualty of the show behind the shower curtain, to an otherwise pointless dialogue about taxidermy, there seems to be a conflict between a transparent appreciation for the original film and the audience expectation for not-so-subtle homage. Although, that is a somewhat forgettable aside given the very uncomfortable and distasteful sexual assault that occurs between Norma and the disgruntled previous owner of the motel in the pilot. Norman is shaped in part by witnessing the event as well as participating in the murder and subsequent cover up. While I understand the intention of this story arc which drives the first season, the scene in question was one of the most horrific things I've seen on cable television.

 

    The storyline takes a very distinct turn from the film in the second episode when Norman’s older estranged brother Dylan is introduced. His abrupt hatred for his mother seems fairly unbelievable at first, but the complexity of his character and the tension between him and Norman builds as the show progresses.  The first episode struggles with its identity but it comes into its own by the third and develops into a Twin Peaks-esque thriller beyond the coupling of the Bates family to a greater mystery of a seemingly white-picket town with very dark secrets. The general idea of the show seems to be that Anthony Hopkins’ “Norman” as we know and love was not just a product of an overbearing mother and a violent sexual perversion, but of an entire community that indulges in a hidden sex trade among other transgressions. Violence towards young women is not an original motif in murder mysteries on television by any means, but it does add a logical stepping-stone to Norman's progression into the madness that is Norman Bates. Although a secret Chinese sex slave trade in a seaside Oregon town seems somewhat unbelievable, the frightening resonance of sex and violence within the walls of the Bates Motel works surprisingly well with Norman's story arc.

 

    The greatest strength of the series is the strange and often Oedipal relationship between Norman and his mother. While this is the main explanation given for Norman’s behavior in the film, the way it plays out in the series is wonderfully surprising at times. She is controlling and alluring, but also very warm and oddly reasonable most of the time. Perhaps, I like Norman, am easily manipulated by her charms, but I found myself never feeling entirely pulled out of the show by her behavior. Also the uncomfortable sexual chemistry between Norman and his mother is very subdued, which makes it almost creepier. Every time Norma dismissingly utters, "Norman, I'm your mother" in response to a mildly tense interaction between the two of them it makes me shudder. The show straddles the line between a closeness between mother and son that have suffered a mutual trauma, and a protective and possessive behavior mixed with a displaced sexual tension that both fascinates and repulses. The lurid town of White Pine Bay and its cast of unsavory characters ultimately pale in comparison to the engrossing Bates family drama in the center of it all.

The Bates Motel is finishing up its second season with the season finale premiering on A&E on May 5th, 2014.

 

 

Digging Out (Abby)

The end of classes and graduation are approaching, and the familiar anxiety of a big event also draws near, one that connects family, drama, and discomfort. As the title of a previous post suggests, though, there are happy things too. It’s a time for celebration.

Yet that stone of anticipation sitting in one’s stomach is far from easy to digest. Much like before winter break, when I chose to take on this film project, my brain continues to run through potential bad scenarios like an over-stylized melodrama on repeat. Who’s going to be where and what if they see them? How will I split my time evenly? Jesus, even writing this makes me want to slap myself; at some point you just have to throw your hands up and say, “who gives a shit?”

The mood of this anticipation is what brings me here, to this post. The very real anxieties and the very real disavowal of said anxieties are exactly why I suddenly rushed to put the logistics of the project together in the midst of finals last semester, and why I needed to do so.

In fact, as much as the film is about family, and about place – home and geography, and how such factors inform who we are – it’s about the individual’s experiences with these shaping forces. The hooded figure above is one of my sisters, who kindly agreed to help me by appearing in a few shots. Bringing a human into visual representations is vital to the felt experience of the film. The final product may fall into abstraction at points, in addition to being too personal and micro in scope for the audience to connect with (if it even ends up being shared with an audience), but at some level my sister may provide that small hint of universality through the personal, someone through whom an outsider might feel a connection.

And though her face isn’t visible in any of the shots, in the end, her persona has agency.  Though the shaping forces are important, they are not defining; the film is not about things being done to someone while that someone exists a passive blob of human matter, and that’s not what life is about.

It’s about digging out. It’s about saying “F you” to the things you can’t control, and doing your own thing. It’s about understanding where you came from and how that has shaped your view, picking out the things you like about it, and taking a shovel to the rest when you can. It’s about taking the time to say, “who gives a shit” while you try to enjoy something that’s supposed to be good. So, as much as I know I will seesaw back and forth from this claim, I say bring it on, graduation drama. Who gives a shit. 

Wait, There Are Happy Things Too? (Abby)

 

 

    Dwelling on the paradox of home, as I have been, I’ve been searching my footage for stills that I think best visualize its conflicting nature.  I’m not sure if what I’ve included above, comprising one tilt shot, is necessarily the best; it just had the unfortunate fate of being near the beginning of the footage, which ultimately became the criterion for inclusion. Originally I was planning on talking about the contrast of the visuals in these images, the beauty of the sky that evening that wouldn’t be possible without the biting cold that the snowy landscape represents, how this is a metaphor for simultaneous positive/negative connotations of where I'm from, how I wish the blacks of the image weren't so noisy (more visible when you see the video). But after having gone through each shot once again, I'm wandering in a different direction.

    The first time I saw my footage, my mind crept into a dark cave to hide. I didn’t think that any of it was anywhere near adequate, let alone good, and I beat myself up quite a bit about it. Besides a lack of quality I thought that there were so many more things I could have and should have shot. There was the night I was driving my mom and sister home from work during a snowstorm, and the flakes were the biggest I’ve ever seen, nearly half the size of a dollar bill. It was gorgeous, and I feel that the film stock I was using probably could’ve captured the flakes that flurried through the streetlights.  Of course by the time we were home, the storm was over. Or there was our sad little Christmas tree, a free item given to us by my aunt (free Christmas trees are somehow used to incentivize her work as a realtor) which is the closest I’ve seen a tree, in spirit, come to that of Charlie Brown’s:

    Or there was my parents faces, their physical features, and the material objects that make them who they are. I wish I had some of that, though in that case I would have had to explained what I was doing.

    Focusing on these things I don’t have, though, has made me realize what I do. There is some usable film footage to work with, but there’s also a whole swath of content that I’ve captured with my phone. Videos on my phone are not film, and they may not share the same quality, but it’s possible that I could incorporate some of what I captured with my phone over break. Whether this would be jarring for the viewer is unquestionable, but it has the possibility of being jarring in the right way.  While much of the audio I recorded is family drama, some of the videos I have reveal brief spurts of spontaneous happiness and joy, which is something I feel is missing from the project at the moment. As much as I drone on about family conflict and destruction of what is maybe too idyllic a vision of one’s origins, there are happy moments too. Moving forward, I hope to find some lighter moments to shake things up, lighten the tone at times, and provide a fuller picture of my winter break and experience at home.

 

Street in St. Paul, MN. iPhone still from video of dancing in the backseat.

 

Production Diary: Studying "Home" (Abby)

    The recent snowfall in Baltimore reminds me of home, as snow tends to do. It’s not an identical situation by any means (considering that snow typically stays on the ground where I’m from), but it’s something familiar to hold on to, even if the city’s drivers can’t say the same.

    I’ve been dwelling on the idea of home frequently. Winter break is a funny time for college students who attend a school far away from home. For me, going home meant a mix of familiarity and culture shock, which gradually developed into an event that was anticipated with dread.

    Coming from the background that I do - a Midwestern origin and modest means - I’m statistically a minority at Hopkins. It can often feel that way, too. In this regard, home was at first a welcome release from a school that often seems dominated by east-coasters and kids with money. But the idea of “home” takes on an entirely different meaning after living in a new place with new experiences for a long period of time. What was once so familiar to the point of being unconsciously normal is now strange, and a distant familiarity develops. Home is something you were once close to, but which you can never approach in the same way. Without realizing it, you’ve become a different person: holidays are now more chore than celebration, and living far away deepens hidden wounds that resurface at would-be merry gatherings.

    This is a phenomenon – that is, coming back to a family in decay - that I wanted to capture during winter break. I wanted to take a life snapshot, to document my feelings of coming home during my final winter break of my college career, but to also have something tangible that I could then use in the process of creating something new. This “tangible” thing would be represented through audio and visuals. I would try create something about my life at home through film. All of these thoughts came last minute, in the anticipation of going home for break. I was lucky enough to be able to take a 16MM Arri SRII camera and Zoom recorder home with me.

    The plan was loose. I was going to shoot at home, but knowing how camera-shy my family is, this would have to get creative. The audio recordings would be easier to pull off, I knew, because I could easily hide the recorder around my home, which I did. The terrifying part of the project is that I had no knowledge or control over what might happen, but I can tell you that what did unfold I couldn’t have expected, and that it was dramatic, to say the least. Whether I can skillfully edit this raw material into a polished final project is another question.

    What will follow this semester in future posts is a recounting of the process of shooting and recording for this film, as well as a diary of the editing process. The film, at this point, feels like a mix of documentary and fiction. It will be a restructuring of things that did happen (audio recorded with the Zoom and, at critical times, my iPhone) and of somewhat staged situations (visuals recorded on film) to make a hybrid of sorts. In the process, I’ll continue to explore what “home” means for me, especially relevant considering that I’m not quite sure where I’ll be living in a few months post-graduation. The idea of what “home” is and what it connotes will continue to fluctuate for me, I know, but in the end I think this film will represent a very specific time, place, and feeling in my life, especially as it relates to home; a very personal film indeed. 

"Stephane?" (Ingrid)

    The Science of Sleep (2006), directed by Michel Gondry, is a depiction of life as an indiscernible mix of dreams and reality. From the very start, we are launched into the mind of protagonist Stephane Miroux, who is in the middle of the dream. Stephane’s dreams are a production, literally. We see him working in his “dream studio,” a one-man television show by the name of “Television Educative.” He plays the show’s theme song on the drums and the piano, sets up all the cameras, and serves as the show’s host. By the opening credits, it is obvious The Science of Sleep will not be a conventional film.

    We soon learn that Stephane is moving back into his mother’s home, also his childhood home, in France. His mother has secured a new job for him at a calendar printing company, a place he hopes to expand his artistic visions. It quickly becomes apparent however, that there is no room at the company for his offbeat creativity; his ideas are rejected and he is stuck performing menial tasks like cutting and pasting logos. Stephane’s frustration manifests itself in his dreams, where he fabricates elaborate schemes to seize the company and publish his drawings. Dreaming is his coping mechanism; a way he can make up for his insecurity and thwarted masculinity.

    Stephane is deeply ensconced in the shelter of his self-imposed innocence and infancy, which results in shortcomings in all his relationships. We see his immaturity most obviously in his room, which I think is fair to say, is a direct extension and reflection of himself. Stephane’s room is frozen in time, still bearing all the remnants of his boyhood. The furniture is painted in primary colors, the tiny twin-size bed is covered with racecar-patterned sheets, the walls are decorated with scribbles, and the bookshelves display homemade toy models.

    Stephane eventually develops an interest in his neighbor, Stephanie, after he discovers their mutual interest in art, designing, and building. The first time they spend time alone together, Stephane quickly gets absorbed in Stephanie’s personal art project—a small felt boat. Like a toddler with ADHD, he is easily excitable and easily inspired. His imagination runs wild, and soon, he is sputtering ideas building a forest inside the boat, creating a sea of cellophane, and making a short, animated film out of the production.

    Stephanie and Stephane seem to be on the track towards a picture-perfect, adult relationship—neighbors that fall in love over shared creative visions and projects. In fact they’re so similar, they practically share the same name. And yet, they fail to move forward. The movie is completely devoid of actual sex; it only happens for Stephane’s omnipotent dream-self. Stephane and Stephanie never come close to consummating their partnership; they never even share a bed. Their stunted relationship can almost be entirely attributed to Stephane’s immaturity. Overall, their romance is frustratingly unsatisfying.

(Spin Art. Licensed under Creative Commons at Flickr.)     

    The last line of the movie is perfectly simple. Stephanie approaches a sleeping Stephane and quietly says, "Stephane?" It's the exact question I was asking throughout the film. Because the film is so immersed in Stephane's mind, it was impossible to determine if something is actually happening or if it is yet another fiction concocted by Stephane's imagination. There were scenes where it seemed like real space and time, but then the rules of gravity would suddenly be suspended or blips in time would occur. I could never be sure. As the whimsical, fantastical film continually traverses dreams, reality, and the muddled region where the two intersect, all concrete delineations are blurred. We follow Stephane as he navigates these worlds seamlessly, opening a door in his dream space and entering a room in real space. In many cases, his dreams often invade his real life because he is a hyperactive sleepwalker. The most prominent example of this is when he slides a letter under Stephanie’s door, asking for the phone number of another girl, while sleepwalking—a rude but unintentional gesture that causes a rift in their relationship. Stephane’s inability to distinguish between dreams and reality translates into our inability, as viewers, to follow his true life events. 

    It is in this complex way, that the film progresses cumbersomely. To make things more convoluted, the characters speak in three different languages, English, French, and Spanish. The characters interchange languages when they speak so subtitles flit on and off the screen inconsistently. These are all constant reminders of the warped, fantasy world Gondry has beautifully constructed. 

Hushpuppy's Search for Sense and Strength (Ingrid)

     I watched Beasts of the Southern Wild a month after it came out in the summer of 2012. I’ve seen it probably five times since, and every time, without fail, it warms my heart. Every shot brings out the enchanting simplicities and eccentricities of an unconventional family living in very gritty destitution.

     Hushpuppy (played by Quvenzhané Wallis), a young member of a bayou community called the Bathtub, narrates the film. She lives there with her father, Wink (played by Dwight Henry), whose untraditional, borderline negligent, parenting style molds her into a passionate, perceptive, strong young spirit. Hushpuppy’s beloved Bathtub is cut off from civilization and untouched by commercial industry. Its people are self-sufficient; living off the land. As Hushpuppy says, “We is who the Earth is for.”

     But besides the physical levee isolating Hushpuppy from the rest of the world, there also exists a more intangible divide—a fundamental difference in character that could never assimilate. Her wildness and free spirit belong and thrive only within her vivacious, isolated community. Hushpuppy cannot be more than five or six years old. Her youth comes out in the imperfections in her movements, skinny limbs, and slurred speech. She still possesses a natural, child-like clumsiness as she stumbles around pants-less in her oversized boots. But despite her youth, Hushpuppy is extremely tough. There’s a primitive ferocity in her eyes and her lion-mane hair and piercing screech reveal something feral in her. The camera often lingers on extreme close-ups of her. In dignified silence, she is able to convey a wide range of genuine emotions—fiery determination, meditative serenity, and unshakable confidence.

     The film is driven by pure emotions. The people in this film, stripped bare of all material things, experience forms of organic fear, willpower, and untainted love that are reflected by the distinctive shooting style. The handheld camera shots reflect a level of realism that I particularly appreciated. It’s not perfect; there are shots that are unorganized, blurry and sometimes even indistinguishable, but they emulate a child’s stream of consciousness and occasional feeling of disorientation.

     Hushpuppy’s universe comes crumbling down when Wink is struck with a debilitating illness. As she rushes for help, her situation is worsened when she receives news of an impending storm that threatens to flood her home. While other members of the Bathtub are quick to evacuate, Wink, despite his sickness, insists on staying, and attempts to convince some neighbors to hold their ground as well. Over night, Hushpuppy and Wink’s tiny wooden shack is rattled by the rumbling thunder and pelted by ruthless rain. When they awake in the morning, the scene is heartbreaking; the Bathtub is completely swamped. But what the post-disaster Bathtub lacks in material luxuries is made up for in incontestable solidarity and teeming spirit. An unspoken social contract and a strong sense of ownership bind the group together.

     “The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right,” Hushpuppy says. Even without a formal education, she has a penetrating intuition that is well beyond her years. She also has an uncanny connection with any and all living beings and spends her time constantly pondering and deciphering their heartbeats. Her constant search for patterns and sense in the universe align with her acceptance of her father’s ailing condition. In this journey, she is lead towards self-awareness and responsibility, self-reliance and identity.

     The entire film resolves in a beautiful and magical metaphor. The Beast of the Southern Wild is manifested in many different forms throughout the film. It is the melting icecaps of the South Pole that submerge the Bathtub under water. It is the awakened Auroch, a ruthless mythical creature that comes for you the moment it smells weakness. By the end of the film, it is Hushpuppy that emerges as the Beast of the Southern Wild, the King of the Bathtub—steadfast, independent, and strong. 

So Many Firsts (Ingrid)

    

    There’s nothing glossy about The Charles Theater. Look up, and you’ll see exposed rafters and piping. Look left and right, and you’ll see water-damaged brick walls, worn-out furniture, and antiquated film equipment. The decorations—the larger-than-life sized penguin statue and the smaller-than-life sized stuffed leopard donning sunglasses—do not make much sense. The Charles is not glamorous; it doesn’t pander. Its aura suggests history. It’s authentic, it’s simple; it exists for quality film.

    Last weekend was a weekend of firsts for me. I did something I do, well, never. I ventured beyond the Hopkins bubble and dabbled in the Baltimore film community. I regret not having done so earlier. In fact, this was my first real theater experience in Baltimore (a pathetic confession from a Film and Media Studies major).

    How coincidental that on a weekend of firsts for me, I chose to watch a movie all about firsts. The Spectacular Now (2013), directed by James Ponsoldt, centers around Sutter Keely (played by Miles Teller) and Aimee Finecky (played by Shailene Woodley), two seniors in high school, who, during this limbo period of life, find each other. The film highlights their coming-of-age events: Aimee’s first sip of alcohol, her first time having sex, Sutter’s first encounter with his estranged dad, his first identity crisis, and their first tastes of independence and responsibility, their first experience with true love. But it’s not a perfect love. Sutter is far from sure about a single aspect of his life. His relationship with Aimee is no exception. His confusion is one we all can remember; a confusion we’ve all resolved at some point in our lives in the same way Sutter does—with the motto, “living in the now.” It’s a naiveté everyone can relate to.

    At every stage in life, your perception of time is constantly morphing. During childhood, every day is a countdown to the next birthday, the first day of school, the next performance, musical recital, or little-league game. When it comes time for high school, you anticipate new things. Life becomes measured by part-time jobs, by proms, by relationships. But at the same time, your life begins to feel like a waiting game, qualified by the impending reality of college and of the future. “I don’t see what’s so great about being an adult. Are you happy?” Sutter says to his geometry teacher, who is reprimanding him on his failure to perform in class. It’s a strange thing to have to accept—to have to grow up and learn when things like high school geometry seem inapplicable to real world situations.

    A big part of what makes this film so convincing is the casting. Sutter Keely and Aimee Finecky look like us. They could have easily been in our high school class. Shailene Woodley is not made-up. Her long, unkempt hair is tied up messily for half the film; her clothing is bland, and almost always wrinkled. On top of that, her performance is believable. In tight close-ups, we notice every slight change in expression. We see her nervous eyes darting around, every spasm in her cheeks, her insecure gestures; we hear the uncertainty in her voice, her timid giggles between sentences. Our heart goes out to Aimee when we discover her dad passed away from a drug overdose and she works six days a week running a paper route for her mother to pay half the bills. Despite her dreams of moving to Philadelphia and attending college there, she is pressured to stay at home to help support her family. The overall depiction is stunningly real.

    Opposite Aimee, is Sutter, a character who I found extremely interesting. At eighteen, he is still a boy in every sense of the word. His carefree youth is apparent: his baby cheeks, his acne, his voice cracks, his early and irresponsible predilection for whiskey. He comes from a broken family; a home where his mom works double-shifts and keeps any information about his missing dad and the divorce away from him. Despite this, Sutter has an adolescent cockiness, an easy-going, class-clown attitude that makes him undeniably charming. It’s intriguing because he puts on this devil-may-care, invincible façade and yet is arguably the most clueless, troubled, and emotional character in the film. He avoids conversations about the future at all costs. It takes an unlikely companionship with Aimee and an eye-opening encounter with his dad to help him find direction.

    One particularly touching scene for me is the long take of Aimee and Sutter’s conversation through the woods. Their stream of consciousness conversation begins innocent but deepens, as they share their hindered desires and unstable familial relationships. It develops into a beautifully natural and awkward exchange about their experiences with relationships and ends with their first kiss. This stereotypically epic and pivotal moment is instead, portrayed with subtlety, composed of only diegetic sounds and crafted in a way that doesn’t linger or exaggerate. This is one of the many sweet and true moments of the film.

    The emotional climax is when Sutter reconnects with his long-lost dad. Sutter’s hopes are high. His idolization of his dad manifests in a built-up fantasy based on all the good memories from his childhood. The meeting, however, is disappointing from the start. When Sutter shows up at his dad’s shabby condo, a disheveled, unshaven, tapped-out man answers the door. Sutter’s dad openly forgets that they had made plans over the phone and appears unexcited to be reunited with his son. It only goes downhill from there. Their conversation continues at a local bar, where his dad remains uninterested the whole time. When Sutter asks about what went wrong with his parents’ marriage, his dad admits to having cheated and having left voluntarily. To make matters worse, Sutter’s dad justifies by saying, “I don’t live in the past, I live in the now.” In that jarring moment, Sutter realizes his dad is a selfish, unmotivated washup. Sutter sees his own life mantra, “living in the now,” play out abysmally in a man he had admired throughout his childhood. In learning about his past and reconstructing a more accurate image of his dad, Sutter is finally able to yank himself out of complacency.

    The Spectacular Now was like chicken noodle soup—soothing and comforting in a way very few romantic dramas and comedies have been for me. It was a complete departure for the string of meaningless, unwitty, unrealistic movies of this genre that have plagued theaters in the past few years. For a jaded viewer, it is a breath of fresh air—pure, genuine, and inspiring. Above all, this movie was perhaps the first time in a while I have felt this strong of a connection to the characters. I came out of the movie thinking, “they understand; someone understands.” And maybe that’s because it speaks to something that’s still fresh in my memory; I only have two years between high school and right now. But I think on some level, everyone can look back and relate to The Spectacular Now. It’s real characters, real dialogue, and real circumstances appeal to a universal experience. 

Ten Under 15 (Natasha)

    I have a bit of a thing for people's top ten lists.  Favorite films (though I rarely read all the way through lists that include Avatar, The Boondock Saints, The Departed and other "meh" movies posing as triumphs), favorite travel destinations, sushi rolls, lipsticks--anything, really.  There's something appealing about the brevity and finality of such a limited list when "favorite" status is at stake.  But unlike most list-makers, I will endeavor to defend my top three choices, and perhaps the explanation will give a sense of how I chose the group and why each of these kids deserves multiple viewings.  So here is my ten-best list of children's performances in film (the eponymous Ethan of "Laughing Baby Ethan" was excluded solely because that's more of a documentary short):

I.  Quvenzhané Wallis – Hushpuppy, Beasts of the Southern Wild - age 6, first role

II.  Tatum O’Neal – Addie Loggins, Paper Moon – age 9, first role

III.  Jean-Pierre Léaud – Antoine Doinel, The 400 Blows (Les 400 coups) – age 14, first role

IV.  Henry Thomas – Elliott, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – age 10, third role

V.  Drew Barrymore – Gertie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – age 6, fourth role

VI.  Mary Badham – Scout, To Kill a Mockingbird – age 9, first role

VII.  Natalie Portman – Marty, Beautiful Girls – age 14, fourth role

VIII.  Shirley Temple – Marthy Jane, Little Miss Marker – age 4, twenty-fourth role

IX.  Hugh O’Conor – young Christy Brown, My Left Foot – age 14, fifth role

X.  Elle Fanning – Ruth Cole, The Door in the Floor – age 4, sixth role

I.   In this astounding film—the first for “Venzhané,” Dwight Henry (as her father Wink) and director Benh Zeitlin—the powerhouse performance by the absurdly cute Louisiana Kindergartener is a revelation.  While New Orleans pastry chef Dwight Henry’s debut performance is beautiful and heartrending, this is Hushpuppy’s tale and the preternaturally talented Quvenzhané never misses an opportunity to carry the film.  Hushpuppy is tough, but her lineless face is the hardened front that hides a child's curiosity, an artistic spirit and a fascination with animals.  Yet Hushpuppy rises to the tasks of bolstering her father’s declining health, weathering a devastating hurricane and flood, escaping the mandatory evacuation rescue center, staring down mythic beasts, sharing a hard-won, nostalgic last meal with her father and becoming an orphan in only a few days.  All the while, Quvenzhané rises to the even greater task of realizing Hushpuppy, the heroine of the decade.  (Extra points to her for how many times she’s had to spell her name for interviewers since the film’s release.)

II.   If Hushpuppy is tough, Addie Loggins is pure steel, ranking Tatum O’Neal a very close second to Quvenzhané.  Tatum’s groundbreaking Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress is one of the most deserved Oscars ever awarded (not that that’s saying much--and she definitely should have been considered lead actress), for in her first role ever she stars across from her real-life atrocious father Ryan O’Neal, playing somewhat atrocious father figure “Moses Pray” to her powerhouse orphaned heroine.  Her disapproving frown is so penetrating it makes you want to hide under a rock til the end of time, yet her constant squint makes it seem like she’s always on the verge of smiling, softening her flinty affect just a bit.  Though she learns the literal tricks of the trade from lost-boy conman Moses, Addie soon comes to beat him at his own game; her conning acumen and inexorable resolve to collect debts distinguish her as the savviest, least childlike kid in cinema.  She is an absolute wonder.  Too bad her parents didn’t appreciate her.

III.   I had a hard time ranking Jean-Pierre third here, because his first role is one of the most harrowing in all cinema and his face of abandonment is enough to break your heart, but perhaps the 14-year-old wouldn't mind taking bronze after a couple of elementary school girls (I think J-P would be un gentilhomme about it).  A misguided, mistreated boy with only one friend in all of Paris--René (played by the incredible one-film wonder Patrick Auffay, who should probably be on this list), Antoine's well-dressed, businesslike partner in cutting their punitive school and going to the movies.  Since Antoine Doinel is a vaguely autobiographical character for director/film devotee François Truffaut, the shot of the two boys gazing in wonder at the cinémathèque screen speaks volumes about Truffaut's childhood relationship with movie houses; but the image also reveals what a talent Jean-Pierre really is.  The utter fascination on his face, his obvious enthrallment with the film prove what a joy it is for Antoine to escape his own disheartening life for a few hours.  Berated on all sides, he has no respite from psychological torture, abusive hands or shrieked insults--all the world seems to raise one voice to tell him he's a failure.  So in the tragic, jarring final scene, when he runs away from his destructive "correctional" boarding school and makes it to the shore, in that last zoom towards his face as he recognizes that nothing has changed, that he still has absolutely nowhere to go, we see both Antoine's hopeless desperation and Jean-Pierre's outrageous thespian skill.  No wonder they put that shot on the poster.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

Edward Scissorshands: The Meaning of Being Different (Yeirim)

When I tell people that I am a film major, one of the most frequently asked question is ‘what is your favorite film?’ The list of my favorite films changes from time to time, but at the very top of it always is Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorshands. To me, it is almost heartbreaking when someone so confidently says that Edward Scissorshands is a horror film. Well, it could be called a monster film, but surely not a horror film. A horror film generally makes use of the abnormality as a source of fear, but the abnormality in Edward Scissorshands is not necessarily something to fear. In fact, the film twists the meaning of ‘being different’ and tackle the concept itself: what is being ‘abnormal?’ How do we define it?

The fact that Edward is different from the people in the town is directly brought into play right away with his entrance to the story, but it is hinted from the very beginning of the film. The opening sequence of the film shows a series of images immersed in dark pale blue. These images which later are revealed to be components of Edward’s castle, are mostly eerie gothic figures such as a gargoyle statue and strange machines, or some things that are not actually eerie in their nature such as homemade cookies and human hands which appear distorted in the low-key lighting which emphasize the shadows and darkness greatly. After the opening sequence, we jump briefly into the warmly lit room of Kim who has now has become an old woman telling a story about Edward to her grand-daughter, but the overall atmosphere of the setting of the film at the moment is taken over by the dark, pale quality which stretches out from the previous images of the castle and returns to and ends at a shot of a window inside the hardly-lit castle, by which a man with pale skin, black hair and black cloth stands.

Therefore when the next shot immediately cuts to the sunlit town with houses painted in bright pastel colors standing on green lawn, a huge gap is automatically created between the world of darkness in which Edward stands, and the world of the town. Since the town is the environment where people are typically familiar with and since the town looks simply peaceful on the outside- the birds chirp and the people are leisurely doing simple tasks such as mowing the lawn, watering the grass, or fixing a roof- it may seem like a place that stays under the realm of ‘normal’. However, even though most of the story takes place in the town, the town is not necessarily described as a default normal setting of the film. As the townspeople are introduced more closely to the audience through the eyes of Peg, it is very much clearly suggested that the people of this town are not as normal as expected. A housewife who tries to seduce a plumber, a girl who tries every cosmetic on but actually does not even think of buying one, and a woman who is too absorbed in religion, all are not the kind of people who are categorized as ‘normal’ in our society. Such characters of the town therefore betray the seemingly happy and peaceful life of the town, and through them the film poses a question on the authenticity of the town as a normal setting. The fact that the dark, eerie world of Edward and his castle was in play from the very beginning of the film prior to the introduction of the town also casts a doubt about ‘what is the film’s true default setting?’

The main character, Edward heats up this debate about the concept of ‘being different’. When Peg first encounters him, Edward walks out of the shadow from the furthest corner of the attic, with his black outfit and hair completely merged into the shadow and only his blades from his scissorshands visible in a streak of light. In this very moment, his figure is very monstrous and horrific, but when Edward’s frightened face comes into the light and his fragile voice speaks two words, ‘Don’t go,’ his innocence and vulnerability that lies inside his terrifying appearance are revealed, just like his beautiful garden that lies inside the eerie exterior of the castle. With these two different setting, a seemingly ‘normal’ town with its people not very pleasant and a seemingly ‘abnormal’ castle with its owner not very terrifying or harmful, the film completely blurs the boundaries between the normal world and the abnormal world and tackles on the concept of abnormality itself.

Nonetheless, the film does not settle for blurring the concept of abnormality. It drives it further and asks what this abnormality means in the society we are living, and how the society treats the abnormality, or someone who is abnormal. Actually at first, the townspeople take Edward’s abnormality in, in a quite sensible way. They do not judge Edward by his appearance or by the fact that his hands are scissors from the first place. They first approach him with a careful curiosity, and then as they find out that Edward has remarkable ability with using his scissorshands, they all become greatly fond of him and treat him warm-heartedly as their good neighbor and friend. Upon this moment, Edward’s peculiarity is a gift and an object of admiration, which tells that the film is not simply complaining about ‘why can’t people admit someone who is different?’

The real issue that the film wants to talk about unveils when the problem starts to spur out as Edward gets blamed for trespassing instead of Jim. As soon as the news is heard, the people in the town begin to whisper about how Edward can be a possible danger to the neighborhood. They do not care for the real evidence, for Edward’s difference automatically becomes an evidence for them to believe that he is the evil one. At this point, Edward’s peculiarity immediately falls to the ground and becomes an object to be feared and to be destroyed. Nothing has changed inside Edward, but the altered point of view on him suddenly drags him down and all his actions are considered to be of evil intention. When Edward accidentally cuts Kim’s palm startled by Jim’s shout towards him, Jim accuses him of such action saying ‘now you’ve done it,’ implying that he is finally beginning to reveal his evil nature. Such blind accusation towards Edward accumulates and finally explodes within him. In the next shot, Edward walks down the neighborhood in extreme anger. He violently cuts all his clothes off in pieces which he has put on in order to be a part of the ‘normal’ people. As the torn pieces of clothes fall from him, Edward’s black, hard and rough armor-like outfit appears again. The townspeople who treated him as if he is a monster finally have brought his monstrosity to the surface. A great irony is created here as the pretty garden statues of the neighborhood are featured in the background all of which are the evidence of Edward’s favor for the people. Eventually, the townspeople have trampled his good nature down and raised his inner violence instead.

Finally, at the end of the film when Edward actually kills Jim by his own will, Edward eventually becomes a true monster to the townspeople. The change in the attitude of the townspeople not only made Edward possess the monstrous qualities such as anger, hatred, and violence, but at the same time also forced him to define himself as a dangerous monster which can even hurt his beloved one regardless of his intention. As soon as he realizes this, he says ‘goodbye’ to his most beloved, Kim, and for the rest of his lifetime, stays in his castle, completely isolating himself from the rest of the people. Through this heartbreaking story one who is ‘different’ had to go through, the film suggests that being different still is an object of great threat not because abnormality itself is dangerous, but because people so easily dismiss abnormality as monstrous.