Made a movie? A film festival nearby or far might be the right place to show it. They are numerous, many are wonderful, and most are open to submissions.
The film premiers at the Museum of Modern Art’s Docs Fortnight 2018. ArtsDaily.org describes Docs 2018 as the Musuem of Modern Art’s
“17th annual showcase of outstanding and innovative nonfiction film from around the world. This year’s festival, which runs February 15–26, 2018, includes an international selection of more than 20 documentary features and an extensive program of short films, with filmmakers and artists present for discussions following many of the films. These screenings represent the North American, US, or New York premiere of nearly every film featured in the festival—along with the world premieres of Susanna Styron’s Out of My Head (2017), Jeffrey Perkins’s George (2017), Chico Colvard’s Black Memorabilia (2017), Jules Rosskam’s Paternal Rites (2017), Michelle Memran’s The Rest I Make Up (2017), Amy Jenkins’s Instructions on Parting (2018), and more. Doc Fortnight 2018 is organized by Kathy Brew, Guest Curator, with Gianna Collier-Pitts. ”
What sets the context, what sets the entire range of imagery presented in a horror film, just like any other movie, is its cinematography…A prime example of everyday camera shots that horror uses to utmost effectiveness is the shot, reverse-shot technique.
The Coen Brothers often use this method for their dialogue scenes to visually display a sort of rhythm or flow between characters or the environment. We see this in O Brother Where Art Thou? in the scene where the characters have reunited in a movie theater. Delmar, played by Tim Blake Nelson, turns to Pete, played by John Turturro, to tell him they thought he was turned into a toad. The shot, reverse-shot method here paired with the slow, hushed speech of the characters very clearly conveys to the audience the humour of the ridiculous situation the characters are in.
Now take this standard method of shooting a dialogue scene and apply it to a horror film, for instance in screenwriter Henrik Galeen’s silent Nosferatu, where the character of Thomas Hutter sees Count Orlok in the hallway staring back at him from the doorway of his room. Hutter runs to his bed, and we get a shot, reverse-shot sequence of him cowering in his bed, to his view of the doorway, where Orlok slowly opens the door without touching it, and creeps into Hutter’s room ever so slowly. Taken this way, the shot sequence is doing the exact same thing that it would be doing for character dialogue in a talkie, showing body language and rhythm, except in a silent film like Nosferatu, body language is sometimes all the audience is given, which furthers the importance of the usage of the shot, reverse-shot method within the context of horror given to the viewer in Nosferatu.
Another example of this cinematography tactic, this time in a more contemporary film, is a scene from the short film Lights Out by Swedish director David F. Sandberg. The protagonist, played by Lotta Losten, walks through a hallway in her home and turns out the light. The first shot begins with her walking towards the camera, which is placed outside the hallway. As Losten passes through the doorway and flicks the switch on the other side, she sees something appear in the now dark hallway staring back at her. After a short hold, the camera view changes from the woman’s point of view to the newly appeared monster’s point of view looking back at her through the dark hallway, then back to the woman’s point of view where she flicks the light switch back on and to reveal the apparition is no longer there. This shot-reverse-shot establishes presence. Instead of staying on the one character that we already know exists in the space, reverting to the hallway shot suspenesfully confirms to the viewer that indeed there is something else in the house.
All movies, at least in an expressionist kind of view, make something from nothing, or take the world around us and change it, alchemy-like, into something impactful—something new and foreign to us, or something familiar and relatable. Horror, meaningful and terrifying, both awe-inducing and horrible, takes this powerful, familiar cinematographic practice and uses it to create genre-specific new ideas, actions and reactions… The technique that make us laugh in comedy petrifies us in horror. And for many in the audience, the horror lasts longer than the laughter.
Stills and music from the English language version of Josef von Sternberg’s Blue Angel (1930)
Writes Professor Robert Gerst:
In “The Value of Pessimism” written for Film History, Sophia Brown (’18) analyzes Josef von Sternberg’s Blue Angel (1930) and Fritz Lang’s M (1931). She explains why Weimar era Germany audiences (and maybe all of us) valued movies that regard human behavior with a dark and brooding eye.
“You must have your eyes open. The habit of looking at things with curiosity should carry through in everything you do. Marvel is all around you.” – Enrique Martinez Celaya
I originally made this short film for my Creativity & Difference freshman seminar taught by Professor Preziuso. We were asked to create a project in any medium that reflected a subject we had covered in the class. My story stemmed from the changes, doubts, and questions I was having throughout my first semester. I felt very connected to one of our readings entitled, “Being an Artist” by Enrique Martinez Celaya and wanted to use that as my main source of inspiration.
I created this film to express that making art is so much more than just putting marks on canvas, molding clay, or piecing together clips for a film. An artist needs the courage to create, the strength to accept self-criticism and the criticism of others. Many times creators are stifled due to their own fears. I wanted this film to empathize with artists while also conveying to others the rewards and struggles of creating. There is a constant undiscussed pressure in art making which is so challenging yet beautiful. It’s that story I wanted to tell.
Ryan’s film Broken was the final project he did for the Spring 2017 summative elective “Imagining Others: from Strangers to Cyborgs.” In Broken, Ryan reflects on his own and his family’s bi-lingual and bi-cultural background, using a speculative, sci-fiction lens. His inspiration for this work was the poetry collection “Cannibal” by Safiya Sinclair, which we read in class. Ryan graduated in Film/Video in May 2017.
For my final project in Literary Traditions with Professor Leon Steinmetz, I created a more modern day Genesis. Instead of discovering a land untouched by humans, two individuals encounter two objects which symbolize larger themes or issues in our society today.
The video depicts a boy (actor is Jackson Boldt) and a girl (actor is Hannah Boldt) in an almost empty desert. There they come across a television and a mirror. The television represents technology. The mirror represents vanity. The video is meant to show temptation and the dangers that can come from it as well as our culture’s growing infatuation with technology and self-image.
I directed and edited the piece. I shot it at the Rhode Island desert in West Greenwich. I composed the music.
Animation for my Literary Traditions class with Professor Leon Steinmetz!
The project was to create a portfolio worthy piece of artwork that is related to a text we read during the semester. Being an animation student, I decided to depict the reading Gulliver’s Travels as a modern fantasy cartoon. I felt that the text was very imaginative despite it being a very harsh criticism of the time period it was written in.
I wanted to celebrate the whimsicality and exciting portions of the story using a style that would appeal to children and adults alike. I started with this collection of Gulliver’s Travels concept art. This project took me two weeks of drawing and editing nonstop.
For my final project in Literary Traditions with Professor Leon Steinmetz I gravitated towards Caliban’s speech about dreams in Shakespeare’s The Tempest because of the visceral imagery the speech evokes. I mainly set out to convey the relationship between Caliban’s internal dreamscape and the ominous forest around him, and to go about illustrating that and the sounds he speaks of.
Sons and Daughters of the Incarcerated is an intimate personal portraiture piece “… of boyhood marked by the criminal justice system, and what it means to become a man in America.”
On Friday, September 29th, 6:30 – 8:30 PM, I am hosting a fundraiser for this deeply compelling feature documentary film at my Brickbottom Studio — just off of McGrath Highway in Somerville near Union Square. Everyone is invited to join the director, the producer, other supporters and me for a sneak peek at this moving piece and to learn more about what’s needed to help get this important project across the finish line. Hors d’oeuvres, beer and wine will be served. No donation is required.