LesPsych
I’ve had been working on LesPsych for nearly two years before it was made. When it started I was doing it for a class and I was trying to one-man it. Unfortunately, I found out quickly how helpful it is to have a producer for a project as it quickly fell apart. On one of my major shoot dates I actually had all but one of my actors not show up (most slept in or forgot) and the one that did show up came 30 minutes late. At that point it was too late to do anything else so I completely rewrote the script right there and filmed the project “The Loneliness of Doubt.” A few years later I decided it was time to try to make the original again, this time with a crew of four people (myself, a producer, a cinematographer, and a grip). This started out as just a labor of love, though by the end of it both myself and my crew were able to get practicum credit for it. The budget was about $40 (spent on printing film and various other props) and the shooting was done over about four days (anywhere from 6-13 hour days). It was shot as a shoddy behind the scenes documentary, but don’t be fooled there was a lot of planning and effort gone into actualizing this film.
Ideas:
The mission statement for this film was “In a world full of so many uncertainties how can I really know anything about myself?” From there comes the idea of an actress wrestling with her own identity and even the possibility she might not exist. The whole film was meant to put up a facade, it really wasn’t a documentary and the subtitles are all completely wrong (in each instance what’s actually being said along another line from what is subtitled). This film actually came out to about 24 minutes when cut like the script had it, it’s now down to 16.5 to give you an idea of how much was cut. Some scenes was an introductory German narration about certainty, two other monologues original on either side of Amber’s final monologue, and the last part of Amber’s first monologue. Other scenes were cut down also but none nearly as drastically as those four. The film was shot on an HDV camera with minimal post-production effects. Mostly some color correction and we replaced the video originally playing on the television in the second scene (with the woman who gets shot) with one that looked better.
This project made it into the Indiana Festival for Independent Film and Video
This also made it into the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Film Festival