evoking childhood: director's statement of intent

NAME: Brenna Empey

DATE: 9/6/2016

DP: Hailey Schoenfeldt

1.    What was your childhood like? Carefree? Painful? Glorious? Mysterious? What specific memories do you have? Sounds? Smells? Tastes? Faces? What did the world look like to you then? How did others see you? What scared you? What did creativity feel like to you? How have things changed for you?

My childhood was odd, I think, because I spent the first eight years of it as an only child. When my little brother entered the scene, I had no idea what to do or how to act, and I’m kind of in the same state of mind even as a 21-year-old. Being social was never hugely important in my family, even growing up – that’s not to say I didn’t have friends, but I don’t think I valued my friends like I probably should have. I have distinct memories of my parents telling me I could invite someone to the pool, as my family was going that evening, and me saying that I didn’t want to. I don’t remember being bullied or mistreated by other children when I was young, but I certainly wasn’t popular by any stretch of the imagination. I was smart, I was really going places, and that was about it. I was a bit of a show-off, and not the fun type. I did value connections I made with others, though – when I was offered a position at a spectrum school, I decided not to go because I would be leaving my friends.

When I moved to Utah, my values shifted a bit. I’d grown up in a city where leading a vastly different life from others was acceptable. But I moved into suburban Utah, where all the neighborhood kids knew each other, and all their moms went to book club and volunteered at schools together and went to lunch every week. It was a culture shock for both me and my parents, and I don’t think we ever really fit into the tightly-knit Mormon neighborhood lifestyle. What did happen, though, was I began to see people differently, especially people my age. I’d never heard the word “clique” until I moved to Utah, and I didn’t understand what it was until I began to feel left out of the clique of ward girls that were constantly hanging out in my neighborhood. That led me to be malleable, to become a person the other girls wanted to be around, and I became extremely skilled in chameleon friendships. I took on people-pleaser qualities until I was popular and felt included. I still do that.

Emotionally and psychologically, my childhood wasn’t traumatizing in any way, but it was definitely challenging. I went from being an only child living in a city, with the unthreatened attention of my parents and plenty of friends, to a confused sister with no understanding of how to function in a clique or in a neighborhood atmosphere. One thing that stayed with me throughout it all was creativity, however. I’m grateful to my parents for fostering creativity and imagination in me from a very young age. I wrote little stories when I was young and did a lot of craft projects with my mom and her sisters. Creating things has been a state of escape since I was very young, and I’m glad that I’ve been able to pursue it as a career as I get older.

2.   List 10 or more people, places, or things that remind you of your childhood. Can any of these be used as symbols or motifs to communicate meaning and emotion?

My grandmother’s dining room (Virginia)

The beach at Chincoteague Island

The parking lot of the apartment complex where I lived

My parents’ bedroom

My second-grade science teacher

Calf Creek Campground

My grandparents’ basement (Utah)

Columbia Elementary School

My great-grandmother’s garden (California)

My cousins Jessica and Spencer

3.   Before continuing, consider how can you subvert our expectations and surprise us? What individual images capture the essence of your experience? How can you avoid cliché? Can you provide a hint of story--even if it is not elaborated on? How can you imply rather than explicitly state? How can you use ellipsis to let the audience fill in gaps? How can color, or lack thereof, help evoke emotion? What about sound?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I was never really taught how to create connections with people as a child, so there aren’t a lot of faces in the memory of my childhood. Rather, it’s hands or feet, or the backs of heads. When I think about a particular Christmas when my grandmother bought me a stuffed animal, I don’t remember what she looked like as she gave it to me, but I remember what her hands looked like, and I remember the sound of her voice as she gave it to me. I have a lot of memories like that. I remember feet, bare, being dipped in a therapeutic wax soak in my aunt’s tiny living room – I don’t know whose they were. I’m thinking about doing a film that has a complete absence of faces, because most of my childhood memories don’t have faces.

4.   Describe the progression--the beginning, middle, and end--of this film in three or four sentences? In other words, what happens in this scene as it starts, as it progresses, and as it ends?

I imagine a woman writing an angry letter, sitting at a table. She gets up to get a snack and walks over broken mirrors on the floor. She goes to a cabinet and retrieves a plastic bag full of Teddy Grahams with their heads broken off. She sits back down, finishes the letter, and stuffs it into an envelope. She goes out to put it in her mailbox and puts the red flag up, and next thing we know it's being opened by a man we've never seen before. He has a cartoon face on the back of his shirt. The end!

5.   What, specifically, would you like the audience to understand? How do you intend to communicate that information?

Basically I’d like the audience to understand what I described in the third question, about how I had a difficult time learning how to create connections with people (and I’m still learning). If I were to name a theme for this film, it would be that people aren’t always remembered through their faces, but can be remembered through their actions or voices or quirks.

6.   What emotion(s) do you want the audience to experience about your childhood through this film? How do you intend to make this happen?  

I want the audience to experience inaccessibility. Specifically, I want the “characters” in my film to be inaccessible. I want to film their hands, their feet, the backs of their heads – all with the intention of distancing the audience from them. I hope that it will feel paradoxical, almost frustrating, because the characters seem so close and the audience will be interacting with various parts of them, except the face. It will be frustrating because the face is the most expressive part of a human being, the part that speaks the most to an audience, and my audience won’t be able to see it.

7.   What is the first image of the film? What is the final image of the film? Why are you choosing these specific images?

The first image of the film will be the back of a woman’s head as she ties her hair back into a ponytail. The last image will be a handheld shot – we are circling from the back of a man’s head, and as we’re just about to see his face, the film will end and cut to black. I want the moments that we’re closest to seeing a human face, and therefore closest to making a connection with that person, to be the most intimate. Hence I’ll show the backs of my characters’ heads, so we’re seeing what they’re seeing and sharing their point of view, but we can’t see them.

8.   Why is this scene personal to you? Ask yourself, “Why do I need to make this scene?”

It’s important and personal to me because, when I was younger, I don’t think I realized what it meant to be emotionally disconnected from other people. I didn’t realize how taxing it was to make a conscious effort to be someone’s friend, rather than allowing it to be a comfortable and natural process. I need to make this scene because I need to have a conversation with myself about how it felt to be an emotionally disconnected child. There’s a reason I don’t like cuddling, a reason I don’t keep in touch with old friends, a reason I have a hard time making new ones and keeping them. I’ve thought about it a lot but never written it down, and I think this film will serve as my writing utensil.

9.   Before making your shot list, consider: How can you subvert the audience’s expectations and surprise us? What individual images capture the essence of your experience? How can you avoid cliché? Can you provide a hint of story--even if it is not elaborated on? How can you imply rather than explicitly state? How can you use ellipsis to let the audience fill in gaps? How can color, or lack thereof, help evoke emotion?

I think the biggest cliche I can avoid with my scene is never giving the audience the satisfaction of seeing a face. Perhaps some people will go into my film thinking I'll show in the very end - maybe it'll be the last frame, a final face. I'm not going to give them that. There will be tantalizing moments where we get close, we almost see a face, but it'll never happen. I think I'll do a slice of life narrative rather than a highly structured story, because I'm more interested in the everyday occurrence of being emotionally disconnected. I'm not going to make my characters try and fix it, or even address it. They simply live with it, and so does the audience, who I'm going to treat like a third character - someone who is observing what's happening without engaging because of disconnect. As I said in the third question, I'm going to use a lot of images of hands, feet, and the backs of heads.

Most importantly: How can you intensify your purpose or intent for each shot? Can you will emotion into your images?

I'll go into every shot thinking: what does the audience want to see? Once I know that, I'll be able to structure the shot around not satisfying that want, which will make the film both engaging and frustrating.  

10.  List two or three potential obstacles to creating a successful film. How can you be prepared to overcome these? Be specific!

     

      - I'm having a bit of trouble with the story, in the sense that I'm afraid it won't be interesting without faces. I'm also going to try and do it without any dialogue, so that adds to my worry. I just have to make sure that each shot is interesting and purposeful enough to keep the audience's attention.

      - I'm also worried about finding actors. I know quite a few since I've casted a few projects, but all those actors have been paid, so I don't know how many favors I can pull in. I need a man and a woman, and I'd rather not have them be college age, but we'll see how it goes.