by Jenny Pham Vo -

CASTLE ON A CLOUD

So what’s been going on since I uploaded all those assessments for this class. Well I think it is safe to say that I am definitely enjoying this class. It’s fun, enriching and currently I’m able to just work freely on a project that I am becoming more and more invested in. I haven’t truly made my own project in a while and now it feels like I get to express my artistic creativity and ideas like I wanted to do with this course. Now this post is a part of my journey through the class, or at least that what I interpret project brief 3 as. It’s a way for James to see my work ethic, and the processes I’ve been going through to get to the finished project, and I think I too want to know what’s going on as well. It’s difficult for me to just make so many things on the spot, especially a complete short film with actors, location, shotlists and a script. So I think this will be my starting post for this part of the class.

So in this installment I just want to outline my personal timeline with this project, or at least have my checklist outlined clearly for myself. We’ve already got the character breakdown perfect, and Tim is coming across great in all of the members heads, but now we have to figure out exactly what needs to be done to get to that final project.

checklist

This is my official breakdown of what I hopefully will be writing about. Not obviously in that order, because we all know we need a script before we do a shotlist, but its a good guide for me. But the first thing I want to do is go more into the research behind this project, specifically why the concept of Tim intrigues me so much. So in the next issue(?) blog piece thing I will be going through my reasons and research behind the fan culture aspect of this film.

by Jenny Pham Vo -

IN MY LIFE

I’ll start from the beginning since it’s the easiest place to go from. The prompt that my group and I received was the following.

“Suppose I shot you. How’d that be?

Some people will do anything for love.”

It wasn’t particularly familiar to myself, but Sam vaguely recognised it, and we found out that the first part was a quote for the 1973 film “Badlands”. The story actually follows along with the theme of people doing ridiculous and dangerous things for their love, and I latched onto that part of the prompt when trying to develop a story, or concept to explore. We didn’t have much success the first few nights, but we did agree as a group that a purely romantic angle just wasn’t something we would be interested in doing. Seeing people fight bad guys, and chase down kidnappers for their loved ones has happened time and time again in film; think the Taken series or Romeo + Juliet. So we wanted to just think outside the box with our prompt, which funnily enough prompted us to go with an obsession angle instead. So instead of people doing anything their love asks for, how about them doing things to receive that love. From there we finally landed on our fan concept, and developed a possible story about following a day in the life of a (potential) stalker.

I personally liked the idea of exploring fan mentality and a stalkers psychology because we are constantly surrounded by people who claim to be “massive fans” of things all the time. I mean, I too am a huge lover of KPOP and have said on multiple occasions that I would do anything to go to a real live KPOP concert in Australia, even if it put me at a financial disadvantage. In that sense I was willing to do almost anything for my love for KPOP, and when we were creating the character of Tim I think I projected some of my fears into him. I’ve read countless stories about fans taking things too far, especially about stalkers that don’t understand boundaries, and I think that it is definitely an interesting concept to uncover. It was actually disturbing to research the area as well, delving into the world of people who have decided to actively abandon society and responsibilities, and then focus on one aspect of celebrity culture to define their life. It felt strangely familiar but also very obscene. I knew I wouldn’t become one of these people, but there was still a chance that any regular fan could take that final step.

As a group, with Sam spearheading the conversation, we decided that Tim wouldn’t be the fully developed psychopath that people have written listicles about. We found him to be driven by a need to fill his empty social life, and find love in something that wouldn’t reject him. We went into the depths of his personality, deconstructing this character down to his childhood fears, which by the way were abandonment and clowns, but we didn’t stop there. We made sure to understand this person, and after reading so many stories and articles on people’s live changing and their evolution into madness, I kind of understood where people like Tim came from. It was a lack of self-confidence, motivation and love in their lives that turned them towards their idols. Celebrity Worship Syndrome was a real thing that got the best of people who weren’t prepared to dedicate their lives to something completely unhealthy. By now I had gotten a real sense of who Tim was, I knew how his parents never spent time with him, how his high school friends never truly cared for him, and how his opinion on life was non-existent. He just didn’t care about anything else, aside from his love for this local band.

Once we had the psychological mindset of Tim locked-down we worked on the script, or possible narrative we could follow with such a character. To keep things simple Sam shared his idea to follow a day in his life, starting with him waking up apathetically to work and ending with him rejoicing in glory of his favourite band. As a group we split off from there to develop the story separately, and Tristan also came back with his own script. His one was more sinister, and had a harder edge of violence and unease to it, while Sam’s script was a basic outline of events in which we could observe how he reacts to these environments. From a producer’s perspective Sam’s script was the logical choice, since it was logistically easier to make, and would require less headaches in the process, but my inner fan side understood the importance of having Tristan’s more violent script. In the end we stuck with the first initial ideas of keep Tim a more humane person, rather than puching him over the edge, and with that we also realised that there was a bit of Tim in all of us. I had also thrown out the idea of making a mini series of short films, similar to that of “Small Deaths” where we follow Tim, or any number of other fans throughout their different stages of obsession. But for now we all agreed that the single storyline was engaging enough as a concept to create a short film about.

In addition to writing a script and planning out our characters motivations, we also decided to take some concept shots to help with our pitch in class. These were done by Tan, who had a clear vision of the style we should shoot this film. We encountered some interesting boundaries while shooting these clips, especially when the boys were recording their bathroom mirror scene, since well, I couldn’t help them out as much. But being in the mindset of shooting things and visualising what event will be played out, Tan had heaps of creative ideas to establish shots, and have movement in scenes.

The entire group has had amazing creative input to this pitch, and I am very happy with the progress we’ve made. We have looked into using possible locations around campus as well, and from here I believe we can just fill in the gaps for the potential encounters our protagonist will have. We stress that this film isn’t supposed to linger on the actual events themselves but the way they represent Tim’s internal dialogue and mentality. As a producer, people usually fit me into an admin box, but I’ve also got to have creative solutions to problems, and I think I can think up of a few ways that we can present Tim as the human being he is, without mocking or judging his flaws. It is now just a matter of developing the final script and listing down the essential shots we need to properly convey a quiet and distant person’s opinion. I don’t want to fall into the trap of using narration, but there has got to be a million different ways we can accomplish our goal.

 

Reference list

Badlands Quotes (1973), IMDB, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069762/quotes

Craziest Celebrity Stalkers (2013), Popcrush.com, http://popcrush.com/the-10-craziest-celebrity-stalkers/

Celebrity Stalking Victims, NYDailyNews.com, http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/celebrity-stalking-victims-gallery-1.45896?pmSlide=1.89966

Murphy, M. (2012). The Psychology Behind Celebrity Worship, Knowji, https://celebrities.knoji.com/the-psychology-behind-celebrity-worship/

Maltby, J., Houran, J., Lange, R., Ashe, D., & McCutcheon, L.E. (2002). Thou Shalt Worship No Other Gods – Unless They Are Celebrities. Personality and Individual Differences, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886901000599

Maltby, J., Day, L., McCutcheon, L.E., Houran, J. & Ashe, D. (2006). Extreme celebrity worship, fantasy proneness and dissociation: Developing the measurement and understanding of celebrity worship within a clinical personality context. Personality and Individual Difference http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886905002552

Chapman, J. Do You Worship the Celebs?, Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-176598/Do-worship-celebs.html

Depression Isn’t Always Obvious (2016), Buzzfeed Motion Pictures, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yq6W7YAHM4

by Jenny Pham Vo -

THE RUNAWAY CART

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6Pc6cBP-8U

Above is a short film that has helped me understand and appreciate a lot of small details within cinema. Like the significance of short stories. Not just the genre of short film, but the art of producing a short story that is cohesive, intriguing, and complete. The kind of short films that have no need for grand gesture or huge plot twists, and doesn’t force the story to be something that it isn’t. I want to draw a comparison here to one of my other blog posts which was focused on Christopher Nolan’s “DOODLEBUG”, and juxtapose these films on their narrative and theme. While “Two Cars, One Night” is clearly outlined and doesn’t draw too much away from the events of what’s happening on screen, Nolan’s work ends with him reaching for something bigger than what it is.

This film shows us how short films can just be a small scene that stems from one idea. Like insight into how things could be, or trialing a “what-if” scenario. There’s no 7 part story arc, or rushed character development, it can just be a small exploration of an unlikely environment that we as an audience would probably not experience in real life. Small and simple, it doesn’t need to conclude with something specific, just showcase an encounter just like Taika Waititi did.

From the title alone you can almost see the simplicity of the short film, they didn’t give it some dramatic title to pull people in, or click bait styled writing of “3 KIDS ABANDONED BY PARENTS IN CARS, WHAT THEY DO NEXT IS SHOCKING” it just tells it like it is, and I appreciate that in any film. James, my tutor, which I’m assuming is going to be the only one reading this, has said himself that he hates films that go for the formulaic and Hollywood style of writing a short film. So I’m glad he thinks in a similar way to me. It’s actually refreshing to watch films like these that don’t take things too far, or too seriously, and after watching Two Cars, and Zombae I have rekindled my love for short film and am eager to see what I can produce that could be similar to them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW2EenhN3wQ

 

 

by Jenny Pham Vo -

I DREAMED A DREAM

It’s weird, it’s strange and it’s absurd.

David Lynch’s 2007 short film positions me with a whirlwind of feelings and emotions. Especially the sound design for the film grips my attention immediately. James mentioned in class how the disembodied voices seem like their in separate rooms to the main narrator, and upon a second viewing I totally agree. The quirky use of grabbing a megaphone offscreen and having the actor yell through it had me enjoying the short even more. I know this isn’t supposed to be a review type of blog, but today’s class presented a lot of great short films that were more my speed.

Now after extensive research on the interwebs, which translates to me spending about 10 minutes after class on imdb and other miscellaneous fact sites, I couldn’t find anything of significance regarding his short aside from the fact that it was a part of the “To Each His Own Cinema” anthology series released at the 2007 Cannes film festival. Now after learning this, I thought about how “Absurda” would fit along with other films in the series, since Lynch is known for being very abstract and incoherent. But I don’t have the patience to search and watch all 34 short films, but eventually one day I will experience it.

So it’s not a priority right now but what I am most interested in here is the sound design of the short film, and how it engaged me so well. I feel like it’s the style I would love to adapt into my future work, utilizing the different intensities that Lynch used. Especially since the shot was very static with things only moving in frame and sound occurring outside of it, it really created the illusion of a dream.

So where do I go from here? Well I’m going to definitely look more into David Lynch’s work, especially his sound design, but I am weary of the amount of weird I will have to shift through. If “The Alphabet” was any indication of how grotesque and abstract his work can get I am both excited and scared to find more like it, although I’m not exactly shy of watching some weird things myself. I’m going to link a music video which I find shares a lot of similar themes in composition and editing. Lynch’s visual really reminded me of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s work, and maybe this is an indication that eventually I can get into his work some more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvtoyk9DisM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ_t1eOAipo

References

Everything Explained Today, http://everything.explained.today/To_Each_His_Own_Cinema/

by Jenny Pham Vo -

WHO AM I?

So I noticed a theme during the first class of James screening the first short films created by some big Hollywood directors of today, and wondered if there was anything specific in his reasoning behind why he showed us these films in particular. They all definitely were easier to draw people’s attention, because if you know anything about introducing new people into something else, you should always draw upon previous knowledge or things the new person is familiar with already to help ease them into being exposed to something new or unfamiliar. So from a teaching perspective it would definitely help students grasp new ideas with familiar names attached to them. But I think it also gave us an insight of how these people started off their careers and shows us that those big Hollywood men started from the bottom too. I gives hope to the beginner film-maker that not everything has to be A grade for them to be successful. It showed me at least that as these men were exploring their own style they were allowed to make mistakes and have humble beginnings as well.

I want to focus specifically on Martin Scorsese’s short film that was shown in class, “What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This.” It was his beginning, and it definitely has the beginnings of his own flair and style of film-making. It’s a blend of comedy, mafia, and noir. The use of narration has been a staple in his future work, and his use of images is quirky and definitely something I would love to replicate in my own work. There was an interesting quote that I found about how Scorsese himself see’s his “first” film. He claims that it wasn’t focused on narrative or characters, and “more to do with the way the film looked and was cut than anything else.”

I think it was an exercise in editing for him as much as it was a debut for his style. It’s not the greatest of films, but he didn’t intend for it to be something to be taken seriously. Even his characters aren’t taken seriously, especially his friend in the short.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWs1SM0xYiI

 

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-use-analogies-to-introduce-new-ideas/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_a_Nice_Girl_Like_You_Doing_in_a_Place_Like_This%3F

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhatsAnXLikeYouDoingInAYLikeThis

http://www.slashfilm.com/bid-directors-small-films-martin-scorseses-whats-a-nice-girl-like-you-doing-in-a-place-like-this/

 

by Jenny Pham Vo -

MASTER OF THE HOUSE

So a reflection on a screening in class. Well for my first blog I’ve decided to respond to Christopher Nolan’s, “DOODLEBUG”. Throwing us straight into the action, we follow the man scamper around his room chasing what we assume is a bug, but in usual Nolan style all is not what it seems. The ending isn’t particularly insane, but it is peculiar. The reveal that the man is chasing another smaller version of himself gives the short a whole new meaning. It could be a representation of his inner subconscious, working hard to squash something inside. It may also be commentary of a man’s psyche after being isolated for so long, having nothing but his own delusions to entertain himself (this is my mini theory). But all in all it could just be a good exercise in exploring the idea of having a small idea and the theme agitation and disappointment driving this man into essentially killing himself.

I think it’s a small window into Nolan’s mind, and his way to putting his thoughts and possibly fears into a visual medium. Everything seems slightly exaggerated, and the music makes everything else seem hyper-realistic. You are more aware of surroundings, and as the man grows weary and notices more and more distracting things, we too are introduced to more surrounding factors. Like the subtle ticking of the clock, or the abrupt intrusion of the phone ringing. All these sounds helped emphasize the man’s point of view and his reactions to everything in the environment at the same time and pace as him. He is essentially putting you in his shoes, and seeing the big cyclic reveal that there is more going on within the scene is also a present theme in Nolan’s other works. The concept of having a scene within a scene, or dreams within dreams is almost a trademark for Nolan, and seeing it occur here is almost like seeing the beginning of Nolan creating his own style.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhKt_CkXD0

 

by Jenny Pham Vo -

PROLOGUE – ON PAROLE

Another semester, another blog.

So I’m not sure anyone noticed, but the twenty blogs I did during the summer all had a title that slightly related to the blog post itself, but were mainly stolen from the great musical “Into The Woods”. I decided to keep that theme of song titles from the musical because it helped me keep focused, but also let me work off from something. So instead of struggling to find something to miraculously write about, I drew inspiration from the songlist. And now as I write this, I realise how similar that was to what I am about to embark on.

This semester I am doing a studio that focuses on how ideas become a fully fledged short film. How almost every great film out there stemmed from one small idea. All of those poorly written blog posts were inspired from those song titles, and I just fleshed them out into great ideas. So it’s exciting to be doing something I’m slightly familiar with.

Now these post are supposed to be reflections on my class readings and screenings, but I wanted to make this initial post, a prologue, to first congratulate myself for last semester, and to celebrate this new one. I’m already having so much fun in class, doing writing exercises and brainstorming ideas with amazing people. It’s going to be a good year still, and I hope I can keep things up.