Elliot (2007)

It's the most overdue and delayed upload of any movie, edit, experiment or short I made in film school. Elliot, the mockumentary I produced in my final core production class has been withheld for nearly 2 years, all for one reason. When you spend 8 months planning, writing, shooting, re-writing, re-shooting, editing, and polishing a project constructed entirely in the bubble of university-motivated independent film-making, by the time the project is done and the class is over you're not sure if you'll ever be able to watch your movie again.

It has nothing to do with the movie itself, the experience or the people who shared it, but instead with the process of deconstructing and over analyzing your work to the point of endless frustration, and the realization that your movie will never quite be perfect enough. From September 2006 to April 2007 my mockumentary was simply 'in production', a loose term used to cover all the behind the scenes bargaining that goes into creating a movie with little-to-no money and few resources. To be clear, much of the struggle was by choice.

My final film could have been a 3 minute short, but instead I opted for a 38 minute narrative, a fake documentary no less, that required me to create a series of fake articles, covers, notes, and posters to tell my story - not to mention the fake debut novel, The Dirty Sailor. The challenges I created for myself didn't stop there.

I recruited my friends Travess Durk and Taylor Croissant for the two lead roles, but they both lived in different cities which required extra planning to coordinate shooting. Even after production, with a half-hour screenplay I ended up shooting over 6 hours of raw footage that I had to edit, which in the context of a single class assignment meant I was dedicating more time to the project than was required. It may sound foolish, but I can honestly say that my motivation for the movie was based around creating the film school experience I hadn't had yet.

I wanted to be invested in a project that couldn't be made in a few hours. I wanted to rely on other people to help expand the concept. I wanted to be able to share in the class screening process and have my project evolve into something more significant and memorable than the average assignment. But above all, I wanted a bookend for my film school experience. No rushed assignment would've felt fitting.

So what did I settle on? A comedic doc-within-a-narrative about author Warren Elliot and his quest to get into a prestigious national writing guild. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that my love of Christopher Guest movies didn't have some influence on my choice.

Elliot Trailer

So several days ago I finally re-watched, Elliot. My critiquing and concerns had subsided, and looking past the imperfections I felt really proud of what had been accomplished. After revising the movie so many times over the final weeks of that class, it felt good to finally just enjoy it as a viewer.

In previous posts I've made reference to re-editing, Elliot or shortening it, but I abandoned that idea after seeing it again. True, this movie isn't perfect, but it is what it is for a reason. It marks the end of months of hard work and planning, and the culmination of lessons and tests from a final film class. Part of the reason for sharing my work on this blog, my online portfolio, is to show the evolution of my movie-making. Any changes I made now would be more for my sake, and renewing my view of the project, than it would be for serving the movie itself.

What I love about Elliot is the banter. It's an interview movie, meant to feel literary and dialogue heavy without being dry; Warm and witty without being flashy or intense. People in class compared the interviews to Stewart or Colbert, noting the contrast in the delivery of actual information and the personal posturing in character development. In short, I guess it's largely about characters who do whatever they want, because they all just want to be right - and told so, obviously.

At the end of April 2007 I felt happy to put the project behind me and was satisfied with the positive response I got from those in class and my friends and family who saw it. I handed out DVD copies with a selection of features as a memento. I'm pleased once again to be sharing, Elliot with a new crowd.

I want to say thank you once again to all of you who helped me over the course of those two semesters in completing this movie. I hope you feel as proud as I do, because your help made it the positive experience that it was for me.

Elliot can now be viewed for the first time in the playlist below. I've broken the 38 minute movie into 5 parts to make it easier to watch over several sittings if you choose. Take your time, enjoy, like that book on your shelf you've been meaning to read for months, the movie is here to stay.
 
Elliot (2007)

Directed by Luke Fandrich

Alphabet (2006)

I think one of the most challenging things about growing up is the way our relation to time changes. We become nostalgic and equally obsessed with the future. When we're young we don't think about remembering, and as we get older we wish we'd remembered a lot more - of the good times anyway. This notion was the basis for my video poem assignment of Film 400 in September 2006. The short titled, Alphabet.

In starting off another year of university, and in one of my final core production courses no less, I had education on the brain. For my video poem I started to reminisce about my journey through elementary school through high school and onto university, thinking about the significance of being in a classroom for a good chunk of my life. I had several ideas revolving in my head, but I kept coming back to the idea of trying to remember my first day of school; how I couldn't remember the beginning of something that became so profound and defining in my life. If you ask me, it was the perfect fodder for a film assignment.

For my theme I decided to focus on leaves with a school yard playground as a large portion of the backdrop. To me, leaves were the perfect symbol of memories. They grow, die, decay, come in a variety of sizes and colours, portions breakaway or breakdown, and as nature has played a major role in some of my other shorts (A Chill in the Air), the way it renews itself is similar to our own re-defining of our past from time to time.

The title, Alphabet, is an obvious reference to education, but it's also meant to express the concept of something simple becoming more complex: letters to language, etc. as in comparison to the first day of school and ones entire educational career.

In the grading of my assignment my prof wrote:
"Great visual structure that has a sophisticated flow with the music. The mix itself is deftly created; the images have an internal movement that allows you to move from scene to scene with a special fluidity. The use of the camera in relation to the structure and meaning of the work is quite sophisticated. Great treatment of the assignment, Luke!" 93% - I was happy :)

More than the theme of the project, which is honest but somewhat aloof, it was the technical aspect of this short that actually made it stand out. This was the first school assignment that I ever shot on my Sony HDR-FX1 camera, which proved essential after my slow evolution from 8mm to Hi8 to D8 to MiniDV. I still feel that had I not pushed myself to use my other cameras to their full potentials, I wouldn't appreciate the wealth of options my newest camera still affords me. For surprising myself with the result, that alone, made the assignment a great experience.

My friend Tyler, a source of friendly competition throughout the semester, also made a video poem in Film 400 titled, Thoughts in Motion. It's tough to reminisce about the class without including him in the mix.

Alphabet (2006)
Directed by Luke Fandrich

Mean Mr. Mustard is Homeless (2003)

I made this project in March of 2003, which to me feels like another world away. I suppose if I look past the random tests and trials, this short was actually the very first video I ever made as part of a film school class.

It was in Film 200 and the assignment was to script and shoot a character study, real or fiction. This project, as was the purpose of Film 200, marked the final part of preliminary testing before actually being accepted into the University of Regina film program the following year. In the end I think they let in anyone who was willing to pay.

It's tough to say exactly what inspired the short, but I'm thinking it was the same thing that inspires every filmmaker to make a 'homeless guy' movie at some point. It's cheap, there's a grittiness and reality to it, and it's an easy way to make drama.

For me, Homeless was a mix of seriousness and comedy. The magazine page of the woman that he stares at and then uses to clean his face, the mustard gag, the newspaper sticking to his face after sleeping on it, etc. are my nudges to the audience to say that I'm not actually trying to be too serious. Still, it's tough to avoid the element of sadness and hopelessness about it that I notice whenever watching it with others.

In class when the project was previewed for the first time, I remember silence mixed with awkward laughs. When it was over a common sentiment was, "I wasn't sure if I was allowed to laugh or not". Truthfully, it came off more serious than I expected.

My friend Ward did an excellent job of playing down the role in my opinion. In so many student shorts people try to overact or include every emotion in the book to make it feel heavy. I feel like the value of this project is that in opting to go dialogue free, keeping focus on a single location, and allowing things to unfold naturally, you actually get a more legitimate view of who this person would be if he was real. It feels like a confident effort despite being 18 at the time. Not to say the project is without flaw obviously, but for the exercise and class it felt very relevant.

We shot on a cold spring day in March armed only with my D8 camcorder and storyboard. I didn't have a clear idea of where I wanted to shoot exactly, but I knew I wanted an alley in downtown Regina so that the scale of the scene would be more fun to work with.

Ward and I, having met at university orientation and becoming friends throughout first year, had worked together on other projects. When shooting photos for a slide show earlier that semester we used the parkade that borders this alley for a better vantage point. That probably had as much to do with deciding on the location as anything.

Technically, I'm still very proud of how this assignment looks. It was shot entirely in-camera, chronologically, and only the music and titles were added in post. As per the rules of the lesson, it was a test on our skills to block scenes, rehearse, and plan on the fly. I storyboarded everything, and my resulting high grade was no doubt a result of my organization.

The evolution of the project came about in 2007 with the start of this blog and my desire to upload my film school shorts. Until that point this project had simply been known as Homeless. With the mustard scene fresh in my mind and the addition of the song Mean Mr. Mustard by the Beatles, it seemed that a new title would be more fitting. Consider the first few lyrics of the song - "Mean Mr. Mustard sleeps in the park, shaves in the dark trying to save paper. Sleeps in a hole in the road. Saving up to buy some clothes. Keeps a ten-bob note up his nose. Such a mean old man".

There's no evidence that Ward's character was mean, but the association between the lyrics and the literal mustard gag seemed like a fun comparison. Thus, the title changed to Mean Mr. Mustard is Homeless - though the short itself (with exception to the titles) is identical to the 2003 version.

My fondness for this short and Film 200 specifically, comes from the memories associated with getting started on a new phase in my creative career. Many of the people I met in 200 I still talk to today, and it was their work that directly fueled my competitiveness and drive to push myself even further. It seems like an understatement to say that a lot has been accomplished since then.

It's all good if you can make a living making movies about being homeless, and not being homeless because you took your shot at making movies.

from 84 (2006)

December 2006. As my final assignment that semester in an experimental film class, I completed from 84. From what I recall, the project was to embody something personal - a diary of sorts. It was a broad focus, but having recently gone through a bunch of childhood pictures I decided that my personal experiment would consist of the abstract patterns and textures cropped, largely out of context, from those photographs (many as you may have guessed were from the year I was born, 1984).

My goal was to create a video patchwork that related to those loose first memories and how despite experiencing a wealth of new things in our first years, we lack the foresight to tell ourselves to remember. There are obviously numerous clues relating to my own childhood in my selections. Wallpaper of my bedroom, toys, clothing with race cars, random family members and different outings all mix together with other indiscernible fragments to create the illusion of a lost past.

To assist in the viewing, I used repetitive narration to directly address the common idea of locking numerous moments, periods of time, or memories in a photo. However, I also intended the repetitiveness to portray a sense of continually looking over the past and still coming to the same conclusions about it or landing on the same highlights. In many ways this short was influenced by the video poem I made earlier in the semester, Alphabet, about trying to recall my first day of school.

What I think is most successful about from 84 is that its depth is dictated by the viewer. Some will find clues that relate to their own past, some are simply guided by the anchoring wide-eyed glare of my central baby picture, some are taken in by the words, and others will find it to be completely pointless and empty. And therein lies the wonder and completely generic nature of childhood.

Like I've tried to do in so many of my other experimental shorts, I incorporate a bit of whimsy with as much of a clear thread throughout the piece as possible. I'm not trying to trick anyone or appear overly ambiguous to fake meaning, but in this genre especially, many freely express a love/hate relationship. Keep in mind that the experiment here is as much about what you choose to look at, as it is about what visual triggers are provided.

In short - keep an open mind and think critically. 

Quirks (2009)

This new short is part documentary, part home video, part experimental, and what I consider to be a somewhat kitschy stereotypical depiction of what every film student experiences on one of their first film shoots. 

The footage, as you might have guessed, comes from an old film school project that I shot with classmates Cam Koroluk and Thomas Gallagher in 2004, originally titled The Brief History of Metric Time.

Brief History was the result of a Film 300 assignment in which every student in class wrote a script, and then two other students in class would act as either the director or producer for that project. This system worked on rotation so that every student got to experience the various roles played in the production process. 

For this project I was the director, hence, I took it upon myself to resurrect the footage after 4 years and cut it into something I actually felt was worth sharing. 

It seems to be a common occurance in all creative ventures when groups are involved that comprimises have to be made. I'm refering here to the film class, which was a very diverse and opinionated group. With the scripts randomly distributed, I didn't have much of a choice in terms of plot, and didn't really have a lot of time to rework the concept before shooting. It was always what I hated about shooting on film compared to shooting digital, there was so much equipment to be booked, and so much more to do just to get your exposures and audio right. 

On top of that, everyone always had their own projects on the go at the same time, so there wasn't an abundance of people to draw on for crew. Even in the best of circumstances, it was just a complicated process to pull everything together in these classes. 

The original film, focused on a man who invented a new system of time based on the metric system. The dialogue was divided by pages of nonsensical mathematical equations, and aside from that, there wasn't actually much to go on. The student who wrote our script was the type that if you were casting roles for stereotypical arts students, he'd fit the bill perfectly, which is to say that he didn't need his script to make sense because he already believed himself to be the next Fellini. 

The worst part was that the concept really wasn't a visual story. I guess dealing with these challenges was what film school was all about.

On a side note, I recall that my script was a comedy about a guy getting dropped off at the dorms by his parents. Inspired by my own experience in the fall of 2002, the group that shot my screenplay did a sweet job.

Quirks (OR: The Blurbs Behind a Lost Film School Project) is a fresh edit composed entirely of the raw footage that was captured to mini DV from the film we shot it on. My goal here is to give a little glimpse of my own film school history, with some quips about just how random the experience was.

While this project obviously wasn't technically 'lost', it stands to represent the handful of my film experiments that were. At the very least, Quirks is a symbol of just how far I've come since 2004. The 4 years and 3 months since this was shot seems like an incredibly long time ago, largely because of how much more prolific I've become with my filmmaking. It's why I felt it was finally worth sharing. I've grown up a bit I suppose.

Quirks (2009) Directed & Edited by Luke Fandrich
Starring Cam Koroluk / Produced by Thomas Gallagher

Hip Hop Ninny Shoe Satisfaction (2004)

I have only a handful of movies in my filmography that I'd actually categorize as stereotypical film school flicks. These are movies that are overly artsy, ambiguous, reference suicide or death, and every film student makes one at some point. They're experiments. That said, Hip Hop Ninny Shoe Satisfaction is actually quite an innocent and playful short in the guise of something far more pretentious.

The project was a joint undertaking with my friend Jennifer Eisler in the winter semester of 2004. We were both taking Film 202, which was a second year core production class focused on experimental film. This project specifically was an exercise in shooting with several types of 16mm film using the Bolex camera. Subsequently, my short Keys to Existence was my final project in this class.

Our original concept involved comparing and contrasting various parts of the body with similar machines and their functions. It seemed like a good idea when we wrote our proposal, but come the day of the shoot we were both feeling pretty uninspired. After a lengthy and cold Regina winter we were finally starting to see the effects of spring roll in so we decided to go for a walk instead.

Jen was wearing her classy 'old lady Eisler shoes' and that mixed with the melting snow, mud, sunshine, and project deadline had us going on a spontaneous whim. I started shooting Jen walking through the park, through puddles and on the playground equipment. It was honestly a big risk on our part, not only being concerned about our exposures with the film, but switching up our concept so suddenly. All I really remember about it now though, is that we both seemed to have a lot of fun that afternoon, which for me ended with a home cooked meal with the Eisler family - a big bonus after all the canned food I'd been eating in the dorms.

When all was said and done, I can't really remember the screening in class, but it's likely because our final projects would've also been in the works at that time. What does stick with me is the process of how this production unfolded, and the memories created from the stress and excitment of essentially winging it.

To me the title explains it all. Hip - as in artsy. Hop - quite literally jumping around. Ninny - foolish. Shoe - the subject. Satisfaction - the feeling after getting it done. Hip Hop Ninny Shoe Satisfaction, it just rolls off the tongue.

I can't expect everyone to respond to this short the way Jen and I would, but for us, I think this stands out as one of our classic film school experiments. And for that, it's hard not to be nostalgic.

Hip Hop Ninny Shoe Satisfaction (2004)
Directed by Luke Fandrich & Jennifer Eisler

Is Film School Worth It?

When I left film school in April 2008, I'd been there for 6 years, straight out of high school, had just a couple of classes remaining and decided that I could do without the degree. It wasn't an easy decision to leave, but the cost was outweighing the benefits by that point. Student life had provided me with the time and means of pursuing my film aspirations predominantly on my own terms. It felt like I was buying time to continue developing my work and skill, but only in the bubble of post secondary hypotheticals.

To be clear, my battle with film school was always the clash between my drive outside of the classroom and the redundant and occasionally time wasting lessons in it. I was more eager to shoot a short than write a paper, build on my experience to complete a project instead of following the lessons intended for those who'd never held a camera, and take a hit on a grade if it meant making a film that was better for my portfolio.

I'd educated myself on film history as a teenager using a book on Academy Award nominees as a jumping off point to watch the so-called 'classics'. I saved what little money I had as a kid and spent $125 on a used camcorder a the age of 12 to shoot my own short films. Without even realizing it, I was teaching myself about framing, composition, camera angles, and how to manipulate my footage. In retrospect, it's surprising how much I was trying to prepare myself.

I wasn't in film school because I thought it was easy, I was there because I was, and am, passionate about making movies. I wanted to be challenged, and I wanted to find a way into the film industry. There was no second guessing for me, I'd known what I wanted to do for as long as I was asked 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'. At 18 film school seemed like the only realistic option, and without growing up in Hollywood or having a family member to follow in the footsteps of, I did what felt right for me.



Still transitioning out my university haze I'm now working as a corporate editor and videographer. I've got numerous festival credits to my name, a diverse portfolio, and a strong foundation to build on. However, I don't think that the answers to achieving the goals that any of us would consider significant are easy to find. Despite my successes I'm still pushing myself to grow, to make new shorts, and to save the money needed to move and make the leap to narrative filmmaking. If you want to work, if you want to put yourself ahead of the curve, and if you want to know 'is film school worth it?' you really need to figure out what it is you want most.  

At best, you'll just have to make an educated guess.  The truth is that you won't know if it was or wasn't worth it until you experience a big enough success or failure on either end of the spectrum to make you justify your decision.  However, if you really just want to know if there's value in a film school education?  Yes, there is.

Elliot Preview

In my 4th and final core production course I chose to make a comedic mockumentary - a fake documentary - about a struggling writer trying to make it into a prestigious writing guild. The project was called, Elliot. 

It was completed in April 2007 and resulted in some positive reviews and a generous mark in the class. The complete film, however, has never been uploaded because I've always felt a tighter edit was in order. Just one more thing on the back burner I guess, but after all the work that went into Elliot to begin with, I'd really like to make sure the finished film reflects it. I've always felt good about the preview for the film though and even used it in class to help support my project. For now I think it's a nice teaser. Only time will tell when I get around to uploading the complete project. 

Keys to Existence: Awards Edition

My most decorated film, my first major film school project, and what I like to say is the movie that established my professional film portfolio. Keys to Existence is an experimental short I shot in 2004 as part of one of my film production classes. The full story behind the project can be read here. Notice the brand new poster and view the promo for the project, as well as the full film, below.

With some of my early film school projects now several years old, I'm able to look back at them with nostalgia and appreciate how much my promotion has evolved. With some of my newer projects like A Chill and the Air and Give it Time also receiving new credits this year, I'm excited to think about how the possibilities for new venues and credibility increase when my work is critically received by multiple sources in completely different parts of the world. Keys to Existence makes me proud because I know how much I grew when I went through the process of making it, refining it, submitting it, and promoting it as a student. Like all artists must feel, even though some of the projects that have followed have been more time consuming and complex, there's a lot to be said about roots and the personal projects that let you see things in new ways for the first time.

Keys to Existence Promo


Keys to Existence

Silent Shoppers

Silent Shoppers is a modern silent film that I made in 2005 that was inspired by watching shoppers scramble after Christmas. It's actually a re-edit from the original film I made in class, Yellow Tag Clearance, which was very similar but instead of being silent was more like a comic book. The original was made as part of my 3rd year core production, but this re-edit went on to win the Audience Choice award at the 2006 Medicine Hat Film Festival. All I really remember about shooting this day was that it was -30 C out so we could only work a few minutes at a time before needing to go into the mall to warm up. It was such a long day, but it remains one of the shooting highlights of my film school projects. 

Mean Mr. Mustard is Homeless

A character study I made in 2003 with my friend Ward. This was one of my very first projects in film school, originally justed titled Homeless. I guess I was going through my mustard phase.

The Geology Student

In Film 400 we were asked to do a character portrait. It could have been someone you knew or a fictionalized person, but the basic idea was to just focus on that individual and give a glimpse into some aspect of their life. I decided to make mine about my friend Jeanette who was a geology major, and whose specific terminology of rocks and minerals I often got a kick out of poking fun at. I took a bit of liberty in editing her answers just the way I wanted (not sure it's obvious, haha), but it was all practise anyway for the mockumentary project Elliot that served as my final film for that term. You won't find any hard hitting facts in The Geology Student as I tour the geology department with Jeanette, but needless to say, there were quite a few laughs. Enjoy!

Silent Shoppers

I made this short film back in 2005. Originally it was a colourful, comic-like film called Yellow Tag Clearance, but not completely satisfied with it I re-edited the project into Silent Shoppers later that year. I always describe Silent Shoppers as a modern day silent film. It's a bit of fluff, inspired by seeing insane shoppers on Boxing Day. I think it's still a fun little film though, and hey, it won the Audience Choice Award at the Medicine Hat Film Festival.

Keys to Existence (2004)

In my 2nd year of film school one of the core assignments was to make an experimental film. As I remember it was all open concept, so you could pretty much do whatever you wanted to. I'm no experimental film buff, but the one thing that drives me crazy about avant-garde is that so many films just seem like random imagery that the filmmaker throws in, hoping that the audience or critics will give it meaning. I didn't want to do this. So in establishing my idea I got thinking about how I could create obvious symbols that would make my experiment a bit more accessible.

I woke up in the middle of the night a few days after the project was assigned, and I'm not sure why exactly but I started writing. I was thinking about the piano that my parents had, and I started working out different patterns that I could make between the piano keys and my hands playing them. A list of comparisons and contrasts evolved into a symbolic depiction of how humans interact with the planet. With countless hours of revision, it was these random bits and pieces of concepts became the basis of my project, Keys to Existence.

Everything seemed to go pretty fast after that. Suddenly I felt I had a fresh and exciting idea, although it's always tough to make others see what you're thinking right off the bat. I remember going around the table in production class to share what we all planned on doing, and I recall some blank expressions. "You're making an experimental film about playing the piano"? In retrospect, had I been on the other end of the table I probably would have questioned the exact same things.

As I refined my idea, and worked out my finished storyboards and shot lists it became more clear that I'd come up with something pretty original. It also met my criteria for being meaningful and poignant without seeming too cryptic or unnecessarily arty for the purpose of faking a message.

At the end of the semester my completed film received a 95% which is probably the highest mark I've ever got on such a major assignment in university. I'm pretty sure that was the highest mark of any assignment in our class, because as an added bonus I won the 'Jury Prize' that year (Best Personal Project in 2nd Year Production) as selected by my film profs. The award was a certificate and a secondhand trophy.

This is the original 2004 version of Keys that I submitted in class.



In the spring of 2005 I submitted Keys to Existence to the Medicine Hat Student Film Festival (back in my hometown) where I ended up winning 2nd place overall in the festival. However, the real highlight was winning the Audience Choice Award. That festival, although it was the first that I had ever taken part in, became the primer for several larger events. Over the summer of 2005, I decided to improve my short further by cleaning up some of the filters and adding several brand new scenes to broaden to the scope of the project.

Due to my success at the MHFF I next submitted my film to the Youngcuts International Film Festival, a competition for filmmakers 25 and under held in Toronto that year. Out of hundreds of entrants, I received an 'Official Selection' as part of the Top 100 movies, which meant that my film was screened in a movie theatre for the event. All this was quite a rush, because for the first time I experienced what it was like to have the support of complete strangers. Even more exciting, and remember that this was before my blog, it was great to feel like I was actually doing something with my work besides storing it on a shelf.

Several months later, I submitted Keys to BUDi2006 - an international digital media festival in Busan, South Korea. Out of 280 global submissions, I was thrilled when I heard that Keys to Existence was selected. Furthermore, out of 31 films in my category, I was shortlisted into the Top 7 and had my film played in an open exhibit with an estimated 10,000 people in attendance.

*Update 2008: Thanks in large part to this blog and my YouTube channel, I was contacted directly to have Keys screened at a giant outdoor multi-media festival/concert in the UK this summer. Only days later I was contacted again to have my movie featured in a short film series broadcast in the USA. See Mom and Dad? Those piano lessons in elementary school paid off after all.

This project continues to mean a lot to me because it symbolizes the start of my film festival pursuits and it got me thinking about my career seriously. Perhaps most significant though, Keys has influenced everything I've made since. It was this project that gave me the confidence to acknowledge my own potential and push through the criticisms and doubt that hit head on in early film school. Although filmmaking is as simple as merely filming something, being a filmmaker is something else; Keys helped me realize that.

Without further delay, please enjoy Keys to Existence.

Keys to Existence (2005)
Keys to Existence Promo (2008)

Film 486: Found Footage

I've done some pretty weird projects over the years and the found footage project that i did for my experimental film class is one of them. The idea was to use whatever footage you wanted and switch up the meaning, or tell a new story. My film, The Other Time Machine isn't difficult to understand, but it is kind of strange. Crazy to think that this project is nearly a year old now, but in any case, enjoy my experiment!

Alphabet

The first assignment of film 400 was to create a video poem; a short project with an emphasis on strong visuals and personal reflection. With it being the start of another school year (septemeber 2006) i began to think about how important and defining education had become to me over the years (and still is). I found it strange that for something that has come to stand for so much, i really couldn't remember how it all started or what my first day of school was really like. This became the basis of my video poem. So many things that end up becoming important start out with seemingly little significance. I'm aware these kind of (artsy) films don't appeal to everyone, and the visuals aren't as crisp on youtube, but in any case i think i achieved my goal with the assignment.

I posted this after the video so it didn't seem like i was spoon feeding, but for those of you who don't digest art films well i'll clarify. The leaves are used as symbols for various memories. Chewed up, dying, growing, etc. This makes the trees a symbol for the mind. I mention this because my favorite line in Alphabet is 'There's a lot no one says because it's been said before. A lot of shared experience in a world full of ideas that people keep to themselves. A world full of ideas, moments, histories . . . just lost' which is said while the sun glares into the lens and on the left side of the frame a single leaf falls (the line starts at 1:30 in the film). Ya, artsy, i know, haha. There's a lot of visual subtly, and i could write paragraphs about why i edited it this way, but in any case, now you know that there is purpose behind why i did what i did (it's not just luck that things match up!). As though there was any doubt . . . :)

Film 200: Character Study

Back in my first year of film school we were given an assignment to do a character study on a real or fictional person. I had lots of ideas, but I think every filmmaker decides to make a homeless person video at some point . . . mine is fake, but still. 

Looking back at this now (shot in spring 2003, I was 18) I'm most impressed with how it looks. I had minimal experience, but I storyboarded the whole thing and shot it exactly as planned. Important to note, the project also had to be an in-camera edit meaning that the filming process would be limited to the functions on the camera. We were, however, allowed to add music and credits. 

I have a great amount of nostalgia thinking about where I was then and how this came to be, but take away from the project what you will. Mr. Debussac, feel free to elaborate on the experience of what it was like to be homeless for an afternoon if you happen to come across this. Otherwise, here's a look at some of my early student work.

Homeless (2003)

Directed by Luke Fandrich

Starring Ward DeBussac