Location and Talent Photos

Sadow puppet pitch

In this film, we want to recreate the allegory of the cave by Plato, using mainly shadow puppets. The allegory of the cave is a metaphor for reflective thinking and the journey an individual must take in order to reach that way of thought. Shadow puppets of prisoners in a cave will be shown with flickering light behind them. The only world these people know is that of the shadows they see before them. They are created from what goes on directly outside the cave. Chains prevent their heads from looking back to see what is creating these shadows, but for them it is irrelevant. These people believe shadows are the real world and that is exactly what we want to portray, a two dimensional word made of shadows that show exactly how these people experienced life. There is a point where one of the prisoners breaks free and ventures out into the sunlight. He is finally able to experience life as it should be and now pities the ignorant prisoners for what they do not know. The 2D shadow world will transform to real life when the prisoner breaks free. Only then will he be shown as a real person in a true environment.

Superstar write up

Todd Hayne's Superstar is about the life of Karen Carpenter and her struggles with anorexia. This film flips back and forth between real life videos and a made up doll world to tell her story. His use of props and their surroundings draw the viewer in to this recreated world. Amazing! The multiple filming styles seem to meld together to create this one of a kind biography of Karen Carpenter. This girl became infatuated with having a thin figure after a columnist wrote about her being chubby in an article. After that, she spent her time avoiding food and taking ex-lax. Her physical health became so bad that she actually collapsed on stage. She tried getting treatment but even that didn't last long. She found a different approach to staying thin which ended in her death at the age of 32.

Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon write up

In this experimental piece, a woman is shown walking to her home. She encounters a man but continues to walk to her house, where she falls asleep in a chair. There are repeated scenes of the woman watching the same scene over and over with symbolic items such as a key, a knife, a flower, and a telephone. The scenes progress in intensity each time finally showing the woman killing her sleeping self. I think the film illustrates a woman's dreamlike interpretations of the incident she recently encountered.

Location and Talent Photos

Sax's bedroom

Dr. Bloom's office

storyboard

LETS GET IT ON OR ELSE

Alternate Pitch…

Let’s Get It On Or Else:

Just imagine…A group of friends who hang out everyday. Everything is normal in there lives. Lee, the fat gay guy obsessed with his personal appearance, Michael, a skinny guy struggling with coming out of the closet yet his sexuality is obvious to everyone around him, Anna, the problem solver who can make a dying man who has just been shot three times laugh and dance with her, Will, the trickster constantly playing rude jokes to which only he thinks are funny, and I guess I can also mention he is gay too, and Natalie, an over eccentric girl who exaggerates about almost everything.

They are doing there usual stuff when weird things begin to happen. Natalie witnesses a murder of one of her friends, who is supposedly out of town.

Of course no one believes her, yet the killer seems to play on her conscious, whispering sweet nothings in her ear, dancing just on the edge of her periph.

The killer becomes braver and braver allowing herself to be seen by almost all of the friends. The usual action is always the same with some variations. It typically goes down with the killer desperately attempting to seduce her victim. Of course this is difficult when all her victims have no sexual interest in her because they are gay, not to mention the fact that all the gay men have a serious problem with her attire. She thinks she is being sneaky with a darth vader mask, hoodie, and a pair of tights. That shit does not match.

There is a twist in the story upon revealing the identity of the killer that shocks everyone. Or at least whoever is still alive.

See me if you would like more information about Let’s Get It On Or Else.

extra skin pitch

Although as provocative as some of these images seem, this film will be PG 13 and nothing close to this degree of nudity.

This film illustrates the sexuality of a strained relationship.

The man is narrow minded. He only thinks of his desires and how to obtain them without any consideration of others around him. Basically he believes he is the shit. He wants to be high. High on everything like alcohol, pills, cigarettes, and sex. He is in search of constant satisfaction.

There are glimpses that give the woman chances to believe that he is still in love, that he might change, and the relationship has a chance to be what it once was long ago.

On the other side of the spectrum, the woman in this film is weak and kneels down to certain influences. She struggles with the idea of leaving this man because his ways are unhealthy. Yet she can’t seem to find the power to leave, so instead she allows herself to become victim to his every demand.

It’s like having sex with an ex. You know that nothing is going to change yet there is still that weird sexual drive with a lack of true love yet full of deep emotion.

extra skin slideshow

portrait film write up

Portrait film project. Bitch Bartender and the Revolving Barstool.

The main idea of this project was to show the character of a bartender who is forced to put up with customers on a daily basis that push her patience to the limit. Between a love sick girl who is depressed over a recently broken heart, a man who is obsessed with the economy and threats of the government, and a man who is financial incapable of going out and drinking, the bartender finally snaps revealing her true feelings toward these types of people.

I personally work at the same bar in which the film was shot. I have had the same feelings as this bartender in the many years I’ve worked in the serving industry. Some people have no idea what it’s like to work in this industry. As a bartender you rely on your customers to provide you with a way to pay your bills, they are the main ones that provide your income. On several occasions I have experienced ridiculous customers that tell me more than I want to know and have a way of pushing my buttons to the end.

We wanted our audience to experience the agony a real life bartender feels in a different way. Instead of displaying the true feeling a bartender feels in a realistic way, we turn the emotion to an amusing comedy.

Basically this bartender goes through a series of conversations with three different customers in which her true character is revealed more and more with each conversation. The bartender finally snaps after the final conversation with a man who is financially down on his luck.

The theme of this project I think is controlling emotions. Each character in this piece displays exaggerated emotions based upon whatever is happening in his or her life. The bartender stands off at first but eventually lets her true emotions toward these types of people get to her. The camera never shows the faces of the customers so that the focus can center solely on the bartender.

The strong points of this film in my opinion lie within our actors. They took the time to get into their roles and they took the video to another level.

Some problems we encountered during this film were time limitations, lighting, and setting. After watching the video, there were some lighting issues I noticed such as the strong shadow behind the bartender and I think there should have been more backlighting. We made the mistake of doing white balance under different types of light when moving the camera, which made our shots turn out blue. We all had busy schedules so we were short on time to shoot the film. I wish we would have gotten more camera angles and played with the lighting more.

I learned exactly how much time really goes into making a film. It takes a great deal of planning and organizing to pull off a video with multiple people. The only frustrations I had while doing this was getting to know the equipment and exactly how everything works. I feel like if I had played more with different setups then the outcome would have been much better.

Momentum:

This video arrived out of pure desperation. I was driving home from school, bored out of my mind from being tired of listening to the same old music with nothing to do except smoke. Then I began to think of how I could transform this boring drive into something more interesting. I took a lot of short video clips using my digital camera of different things I see and notice while driving. I had to use windows movie maker to do all the editing. I chose the music before I started to bring in the clips. By doing this first I was able to get a feel of how the videos would play out. The musical piece used in this is Trance by Chris Hale.

The clip is constantly in motion and lit only by headlights and streetlights. It is fast paced, dreamlike, and somewhat seductive. I think the bright colors add to the futuristic feel of the piece.

Stop Motion Video:

The stop motion video just kind of played out piece by piece. I had the idea, the location, and the people. The object was to create the stop motion by allowing slight movement between each shot. It took 326 pictures to capture this. The five minute distance from point a to point b turned into a two and a half hour trip. The rain was incidental but I loved how it added to the video. All the frames were edited using photoshop. It was challenging working with such a large file in photoshop. Saving and exporting seemed to take up more time than anything else.