So, yesterday I finally was able to bring myself to watch my most recent short film, Starvation Day, again. It's always a bit of a challenge, working up the courage to revisit something you threw your entire heart and soul into (especially considering when last you judged it, you were sleep-deprived and potentially half-crazy). Experience has only worsened this sentiment. It is usually about six months between when I make something and when I never want to see it again.
And when I talk about a rewatch, I am not referring to audience screenings. I've shown my film to family members since I have been back, and although I've come to understand that any sort of familial feedback is pretty much worthless (as even Jesus really couldn't catch a break from the home audience until after he was gone), I still spend all of my audience screenings scanning the faces of my viewers for reactions. I've done that at least three or four times since I "finished" my most recent film, and every time, the audience reaction has been somewhat similar, even if my reaction to it was almost completely different each time.
No, when I refer to a rewatch, I am talking about me sitting down with my film and having it out. Scanning every frame; looking at all the unfixable errors I had become fully aware of while editing, but didn't have the strength of heart to compile; choosing to finally separate myself from the work, and only then decide whether the baby I carried for three months should be raised or bashed against the rocks (it's a very Spartan process). Nothing is scarier than objectivity, because it is only when I start pulling up all the rugs that I realize just what is beneath me. Whenever I do it, I always think about the scene in Blade Runner where Rupert Hauer's replicant finally meets his creator. That's the sentiment I bring with me whenever I go face to face with my creation. People who know how that turned out will know why I have a complex about viewing my finished work.
In regards to Starvation Day, I will say that it is simultaneously the best thing I have ever made by a long shot, and yet at the same time, audience reactions have been so mixed that I have struggled with it immensely. As a difficult genre film (as well as an epic student short with a run time of over 20 minutes), it is tough for me to accept it as the final product of so long and strenuous a process. I worked on the script for ages (although it was rewritten so many times that I cannot really credit any of its concepts or ideas to much earlier than two months before the shoot). My actors and crew will let you know just how long we worked on the film (the shoot alone totaled over ten days of intensive work). And yet, at the end, I'm even now not sure whether it is a legitimate contender for student film festival competition. It certainly doesn't fit into the mold of those sorts of films at all. I just sort of had to decide whether that rendered it worthless.
So, what was the conclusion between me and my film? Once we had dueled, where were we left? Was it thumbs up or down? Had I epically misfired? Well, kind of. I actually divulged more from a recent set of notes that I discovered after the film was done shooting. The notes were written eons ago as I started into a new version of the script (a far more self-reflective one full of voiceovers and trippy imagery). I will post some of the highlights from the notes, specifically the thematic progression that I had at one point sought to aim for (it in no way resembles the film I eventually made).
We open on a guy trapped in his room at the end of the world (zombies). He has decided to hold out there and try to survive as long as he can. He doesn’t think he can survive, but he is going to hold out as long as he can. ----------- He journals about his experience. However, as time goes on, he stops journaling, and just begins saying it all out loud. ----------- He has dreams that we see. Slowly, daily life and dream begin to inter-mix. He has dreams, and talks to and interacts with the characters from his dreams in daily life (or at least references them and thinks about them in real life). He justifies it by saying they help him cope. He tells them about his fear of death, his failed relationships, and all of the things he obsessed over before the event happened. ----------- There is eventually no longer any separation between dream and reality. Thought and the room. His mind has become one with the room. Within that room, all of his thoughts live, and we have no idea where it ceases to be thought and where it becomes reality. ------------ We flash back to his real life. We see that he lives in auto pilot. He subsists. He loves to be loved back. He goes to work to make money. He spends time with people to be entertained. He is shy, and does nothing for others. He gets by. ------------- His mind is his room. Suddenly, with all of the dead around his room, we begin to see that his surrounding is hell. He has allowed himself to be trapped in his mind. Surrounded by zombies. Surrounded by the dead and mindless. In hell. Thusly, we complete the three part puzzle. His mind has always been his cage. However, once trapped in the room, his mind is given a place to breed all of its darkest ideas in a physical sense. That physical sense is revealed for the hell that it is. It is at that point that we realize that his life of subsistence, is in fact, hell. Once the people that could love him are gone; once he is left without anything to live for, a goal or a purpose or some expectation that something is on the horizon, life loses its purpose. Those things just numbed the immediacy of that conclusion. Hence, those things never really gave it a purpose. The question to be left with is, “What would?” --------------
As anyone who has seen my film will note, it doesn't have near the grasp of the movie described here. I would even go so far as to say that the movie I describe above is a lot better than the one I made. Somewhere in the process, something got changed. Maybe I was intimidated by the subject matter. Maybe I was scared that I was unable to pull off the above film. However, as I mentioned earlier, the movie that I actually made and I have finally had it out. And we kind of like each other. At least, I kind of liked it. It seemed to like me (in a HAL 9000 sort of way). At the very least, it marked an unprecedented improvement on my part in the realm of lighting, shot selection, and storytelling. I was especially proud of the emotional roller coaster I took the audience on. I think I went for some difficult things, and audience reactions have been spot on to what I was going for. Maybe this film is so much better that I won't hate it in six months. Regardless, I look forward to keeping up with the process and constantly improving.
Lastly, here's a little clip that has never hit the web until now. It is my old parallel parking video that I did for Single Camera Productions as my first assignment. Never on the web until now, it was the first thing I shot all year. It is really just an exercise. The opening scene is missing (I forgot to press record, of all of the unprofessional things to do). I wrote it in half an hour, we shot it in one day, and I edited it in one night. But here it is in all its glory for the first time. I highly doubt Starvation Day will be hitting the web any time soon. If you are interested in seeing that, please talk to me directly. Some of my other short films are linked below. At least, the ones that I can still bear showing people.
The Freshman Fifteen
Sorry about the video not showing. There has been some technical issues with uploading it. It will be up eventually. Just not sure exactly how.
