The Road to Sundance

At last, our film making challenge has been issued! Just last Thursday our class was divided into teams, assigned different film genres, and given inspiration to create a film worthy of Hitchcock himself. Although I am a tinge nervous, I feel my team, as well as the entire class, is buzzing with excitement to see their ideas come to fruition.

My film producing squad has been dealt the film category of romance. Beyond the inclusion of romantic qualities we must also incorporate the presence of a mime/clown, cheese grader, guitar, and the phrase “Why is this happening to me today of all days?” as well as “It would be better for us not to talk about that.” Based upon the requirements of our project, one can see that my group’s final venture will be a masterpiece.

Seeing that my affinity for romance based movies is limited, I foresee our film project borrowing themes from other types of movies. We strongly feel that the incorporation of humor or shock value is an essential quality. One reason is that the film project has been limited to between three and five minutes (which greatly limits the depth of the film). Thus humorous or shocking scenes allow for entertaining qualities while keeping the plot brief enough for a quick tale.

My personal vision is for the film to utilize dramatic irony (where the audience is privileged to information that has been withheld from the story’s characters). The utilization of such irony can give the audience an empathetic sense of obligation where they are uneasy because they foresee negative events in the future of the character. Whether tragic embarrassment or a painful accident, they know something is fixing to happen. It would be like a piano falling from the sky, on course for an individual’s head, and although an onlooker may see these events unfolding, he’s six floors up on a building and has no means of warning the endangered pedestrian. As far as my group’s video is concerned, we could use dramatic irony to simply set up a sense of apprehension in the audience that an event is fixing to unfold. Then despite the audience being aware of building tension, I want them to be surprised by the event for it would be unpredictable based on the cues previously given. Imagine being surprised be someone who was hiding underneath your bed when you, based on clues observed, thought that someone was actually in your closet. Such a stunning climax preceded by mounting anxiety could certainly make for an interesting short film!