production pictures

Lillian Disney costume by Meg Powers

The Mice! 

Olivia as a very edgar allen poe-ish Walt 

First day of shooting (gayest film crew ever(camera man not pictured(also half gay)))

movies that have influenced me

Here is a current list of movies that have influenced me. Some I don't like anymore, but they are all important to me.

la jette

punch and judy

careful

stranger than paradise

pink flamingos

alien

tropical malady

syndromes and a century

meeting people is easy

that high lonesome sound

bill brown's documentaries

my neighbor totoro

dogtown and z-boys 

fanny and alexander

la belle et la bette

barbarella

olrando

la collectionneuse

dillinger is dead

fantasia

l'eclisse

amarcord

lost in translation

bladerunner

la dolce vita

la strada

nights of cabiria

wild strawberries

red dessert

jean dielman

amelie

delicatessen

murmur of heart

the good the bad and the ugly

breathless

band of outsiders

400 blows

cleo 5-7

teorema

life aquatic

murmur of heart

valerie and her week of wonders
pink narcissus
alice
mother and son
mysterious skin

Mice!

I got my mice for my film! Their names are Ennio Mousiconne (after Ennio Moriconne, the great italian film score composer) and Hunka Munka (after a Beatrix Potter character). The little ladies are currently residing in a cage on my dresser. I got 2 because I didn't want them to be lonely. At this point I think that Hunka will be playing the role of Mickey because she's not as crazy as Ennio and seems to like humans more. Here's a picture of them. They're both spotted, Ennio is apricot and white and Hunka is gray and white.

Lillian and walt character study

Here is some information and references for the 2 main characters in the film I'm currently working on.  

Lillian:

child-like

dreamy

naiive

spacey

simple

unpresuming

modest

sympathetic

caring

Walt:

child-like

naiive

frightened

principled

highly moral

admiring

sympathetic

determined

film school ugh

Sorry I haven't been updating that much lately. I am a month into school/producing my senior film. It is still the wildly inaccurate walt disney bio-pic. The teachers are intrigued and confused by what I'm trying to do, which is a plus because they're usually confused or don't care. One of the major problems with trying to make my film at school is that the teachers have this pre-conceived notion of how one is supposed to make their film school films. Their formula is like a mock indie film production. Indie films have tiny budgets, but school films have even tinier ones so it doesn't really make sense to me to try and replicate the process for the school films. One thing everyone is being pressured to do is to post casting calls on websites and have auditions in the city. It's useful to know how to do that stuff but my project is on an even smaller scale than that. My film is my own work, with my friends as actors, and my friends as crew and costume design. There is no member of my production that is being outsourced because i'm not going to try and play my film off as a standard yet indie professional semi-art film. My film is no budget and I have no desire to try and prove I'm a indie yet professional filmmaker. I'm just a person who wants to make their own film, take that as you may. So most of my film work at purchase has been very sneaky, I always feel like I'm trying to conceal the process I use to make my films because the teachers would not like it. Instead I try to be as vague as possible, let them walk all over me because they're confused, and then hope that when I show them my film at the end of the year their doubts will be washed away and they will understand. I know one thing that my teachers are not going to like is how I cast my 2 leads as people of the opposite sex in drag. They're going to think this is unnecessarily confusing. I'm actually considering never telling the teachers that the characters are in drag and just try to play it off as if they were normal. Last year hardly anyone could tell that the venus fly trap in bumbus was in drag. So wish me luck as I navigate my senior production class, hopefully the teachers will end up being supportive.

manifesto

fake manifesto #1

The New Haze Movement

1) The creation of a film operates on a different plane of existence. It's relations to money, equipment, and menial organization should not hinder or discourage the act of creating the film. 

2) The filmmaker or group of filmmakers creating the film are completely responsible for creating the world of the film. Decisions have to be made about the aesthetics, the writing, the choice of actors, the medium, the message and/or experience of the film.

3) Start with what you have and build from there. Push yourself to use your resources and limitations in the most creative way possible. 

4) Do not question your power as the filmmaker. Push yourself and the film into places that you didn't think you were capable of. Believe in the unseen, unimagined, unwritten infinite possibilities that exist only when one believes for no reason other than need for hope.

5) Do not try to expose "the harsh realities of life". There is no "harsh reality of life". There is no "reality". Life is what one makes it, if you want it to be beautiful, it is, if you want it to be harsh it is. Filmmakers who make harsh films make the world harsh. People need hope, give it to them. This does not mean your film should stray from elements of sadness, mystery, loneliness, or suffering though.

6) Fantasy is the future. Movement brings things into reality, stillness allows for absorption.

More research

I finished reading that book I posted about earlier, Film and the American Moral Vision of Nature. I found some really interesting and inspiring information in that book. Here are some good quotes about the questionable ethics behind disney films.

"They allow us to understand how disney's natural history films distance people from nature rather than bring them close in spite of a cinematic illusion of intimacy; we can see his reductionist, patronizing attitudes toward nature and toward human institutions ranging from industry to family; we can see how he used nature as a shill to eulogize American social values."

Disney films serve as an ego-system not an eco-system. They make nature reflect american values, making an american audience believe their values came from nature.

 "The animals in disney's landscape held those same values of loyalty, industry, fidelity, and thrift dear. It was the american way."

"An attitude towards nature that is to preserve rather than protect, which encourages a static image of a balance of nature that must be maintained, and to construct nature ideologically as a useful product for human beings."

I don't want my disney character to know he's bad though. I want him to think he's doing nature a favor. But not in a patronizing way, in a real way, he's just mistaken.