Production history around: Broodiest Flunkey
Finally, I am getting to what I consider the āfirstā film in my journey as an experimental filmmaker: āBroodiest Flunkeyā.
This film is a bit rough ā it was made as a university project, with a deadline and 3 minute time limit. It was also the first time I had played with many visual effects, and the first time I had shown my work to a live audience.
A lot of what I will be saying in this article will be recycled from my university essay, as my memory on a lot of the details has started to fade.
I created a timeline for this production, so I will try my best to be chronological in the retelling of the filmās creation. Some of the elements may seem tangential, though that is a lot of my practice in general.
I really like the above, because it shows that learning and developing a project (or even personal development), takes a mix of both consumption (books, media) and action (events, trial runs). It also shows how unexpectedly events morph into one another.
In addition to this timeline, I had also created a dated excel timeline of when each event happened (yes, I am thorough). While it shows how āChange Spacesā and āGachaānceā fit into the timeline, those wonāt be covered here. Noteworthy is how many events overlap with one another, as opposed to being linear.
On the 18th of November 2024, I attended an event byĀ Mike Philips,Ā celebrating 30 yearsĀ since the creation of their institution āiDATā. As part of this event, they ran a ātelematic performanceā ā pretty much information is passed from one system to another, leading to a series of interesting corruptions. This, is then dressed up in a fun avant-garde coat of paint.
It would take a lot later for me to realise that this is a great use of chance as a form of creation. Collaboration, corruptions, improv, a digital exquisite corpse, etc.
MA Experience Design ā Design Lab 2
In Design Lab 1,Ā I made a short animationĀ going over the concepts ofĀ DADA. Therefore, making video work was heavily on my mind.
The Design Lab 2 brief made me think about what I could do to help the local community. When looking at ādonāt assume you know your audienceā, āexperiment with materialsā, āleave something beautiful behindā, and āmake a differenceā, it led me down the path of considering making a documentary where I interview people with autism to allow them to be heard and understood.
So, I started to plan a documentary about autism, taking the brief into mind. There were lots of worries about it, and I could lie and say they were mostly about GDPR, but it was more so social anxiety of needing to work with so many people!
The in-class activity about making iterative comics was really interesting to me. I wanted to take this idea but apply it to a documentary format. I wanted something similar to the longitudinal study method thatĀ āSeven Up!ā (1964)Ā engaged in, but also have myself and my beliefs examined as well. This would potentially happen by having a new director for the second film, where they critically look at the first film, and this process is continued indefinitely.
[Accidentally making an exquisite corpse before knowing what that really was!]
The module brief included: ācollaboration with multidisciplinary partnersā. As I was working with film as a medium, I decided to reach out to Allister Gall, the BA Filmmaking programme leader at the University of Plymouth on the 23rd of January 2024. I asked if he was able to send me down the right path, or potentially let me attend a filmmaking lesson.
He let me know about Imperfect Cinema, and that an event was coming up called Cinaesthesia 1. I was very lucky with the timing, as the event was only four days after I sent my email.
[It is funny, I consider this single email an extremely important pivot in my life. If I had not written this email, I likely would not be doing my current PhD, and would not be making experimental art videos. I wouldnāt have heard of Cinaesthesia, and Allister wouldnāt have become one of my PhD supervisorsā¦ This email took a minute or two to write, all it takes sometimes.]
During my initial look into autism for the documentary, I read āThe Reason I Jumpā (2007). The book was written by a 13-year-old mute autistic child living in Japan, and each chapter is them explaining why they do certain actions.
When reading, I realised that there were many areas in which I related to this child, especially thinking back to when I was the same age. While I did not relate to everything, I did more than I normally would with someone. With each example, I started to feel less embarrassed about some moments from my childhood. Moments that I used to fixate on, thinking āwhy did I do that?ā suddenly had an answer that didnāt make me feel as alone or weird.
This feeling of seeing yourself in a book, and this resulting in you being less critical of yourself, I decided to be the message I wanted from my film.
This event was run byĀ Patrycja LorancĀ in collaboration withĀ Imperfect Cinema, and took place atĀ CafĆ© MomusĀ on Stonehouse. Patrycja is a PhD student focussing on psychepoetic filmmaking, and the event shared some of this energy.
(Jess Scott, Dutch Loveridge, and Patrycja Loranc at Cinaesthesia 1ās Q&A)
Imperfect Cinema is a Plymouth-based film projectĀ created by Allister Gall and Dan Paolantonio, which has the goal of encouraging local artists to create films, as well as to help facilitate events these artists can participate in.
[Side tangent ā At this point (8 months since hearing about them), I have heard the two of them go over their intro so many times. It makes me think about what it means to be an academic at university ā the need to tear up old ground constantly to explain who you are and what you do. It sounds kind of hellish. Iād struggle to not just make an intro video lol]
As a note for this event, and the ones I talk about later, the networking elements of these screenings are incredible. You get to ask questions directly, sample a lot of local talent, and see the effort of people coming forward. It takes bravery to put yourself out there, and most people there seem to appreciate that.
I was worried that the event would be too āheavyā, but it was very casual.
An element of the screening that really resonated with me was the diverse āqualityā and styles of work present. There were films presented that I thought āI could do thatā, and that made me feel like less of an outsider at the event.
At this event, I learnt that a Cinaesthesia 2 and 3 were going to happen in the future, and that they had an open reel for submissions. I pivoted from ādocumentary about autismā to āexperimental art film that looked into my own personal experiences reading into autismā.
Getting into Cinaesthesia 2
In order to get a film accepted into Cinaesthesia there were guidelines that needed to be adhered to.
The brief was: āHow can the sensory perception/subjective experience be communicated and challenged by filmmaking? How does film allow us to connect to others and the world by exchanging subjective realities?ā
It also included that the film must be 3 minutes or less, and submitted by 9pm 21/03/2024.
Experimental Film Production Start
I started my pivot by looking into what made someoneās perception āuniqueā, thought about there being so many variables with each person, that everyoneās perception was unique.
In addition to this, I started to consider that my own perception was likely the perception I could best put across to an audience.
I wanted to, somehow, make the audience experience a sense of uneasiness by seeing the world through someone who processes stimuli differently.
On the 26th of January 2024, my wife and I watchedĀ Rosemaryās Baby (1968) for the first time. It is a great film. In it there is a scene where the main character is trying to work out an anagram by moving around scrabble pieces. I had no plans with this at all. It was just a theme dancing around in my head.
Experience Designās Telematic Performance
For one of the Design Lab 2 session, Mike Philips wanted us to do a ātelematic performanceā. Since I had seen one prior via his iDAT XXX event, I feel that I had a step ahead of others in the class. This was due to me already knowing what it was meant to look like, and understanding that anything could be used as a step (as long as it caused transformation down the line).
As such, I pushed forward with using Scrabble pieces early on in the sequence, and planned out what the rest of the performance would be.
I would take scrabble pieces out of a bag randomly. Person 2 would make words out of these random letters. Person 3 would then do charades of Person 2ās word. Person 4, who was wearing headphones, had to guess what Person 3 was miming, Person 5, then drew this answer on a post-it note, and added it to a scene on the board.
This whole process was fun, and made me really like the idea of using Scrabble pieces to tell a story.
Mixing the themes of anagrams and chance, I decided to have one phrase dictate different elements of my filmās story.
I wanted the overall message of the film to be in-line with my takeaway from āThe Reason I Jumpā, so I chose the phrase āBe Kind to Yourselfā.
Using an online anagram maker, I went through the list of 10,000 combinations, and picked phrases that I thought I could use to string together a narrative that told a story I was happy with.
I wanted to use stop-motion as the technique for these scenes, as it added an eerie feeling that the pieces had a mind of their own, especially since they were what decided the course of the story. Originally, I wanted to film the pieces, and cut out appropriate frames. This did not work due to the camera changing focus, as such I landed on taking still photos after each movement instead.
As stop-motion is a time-intensive process, there were moments where I lost track of what pieces should go where. A colour coded guide was made to make the movement and locations easier to follow.
Before storyboarding, I thought about elements I wanted to film and why.
I felt that if I went into storyboarding, some fun techniques may have been squeezed out of the production for the sake of narrative.
So instead, I thought about these elements first and how I could use them in the narrative.
Storyboarding your film is useful, however, I did not want to limit myself by structure. For example, knowing how much time was left, or being fixated on scene order. The scenes were drawn in āchunksā and then moved around in order to fit the narrative.
After doing my rough outline of the story, I wanted to make sure I could include the entire narrative in the 3-minute window required by the submission guidelines. As such, I experimented with scene intervals.
āYolk Unfit Bedsoreā, I thought it was perfect as an opening introduction for a character. āBedsoreā and āYolkā can both be seen as elements attached to starting the day. Additionally, āUnfitā matched the negative self-image I wanted the main character to have, so the āBe Kind to Yourselfā later in the film made sense. Embarrassment seems to be a common issue for some autistic people, so I felt building this into the character was important.
Using this way of thinking, I was able to pace out the Scrabble pieces in a way that completed a cohesive narrative.
With the phrase āBefriend ā Too Sulkyā, I thought I could illustrate that autistic people often want to make social-emotional connections with people, but are unsure how to do so, and the pain this can cause.
I decided on having three second intervals for the storyboard, as I felt this fit best. Any shorter would have been too jarring. Originally, I inserted theĀ Heroās JourneyĀ as a vague guideline for pacing. While this was useful as a rough guide, I did not adhere to it much, as I felt it got in the way of what I believed was a better narrative; perhaps because it made the pacing feel like it was made on a production line.
Once I had my storyboard fully created additional details such as sound effects present, whether it needed chromakeying, and what editing decisions I thought would be needed were added.
In retrospect, I feel that I over-relied on the storyboard. I feel the piece could have been transformed into something more artful by applying wardrobe, doing more area scouting, reframing, and creating some concept art.
After drawing up the storyboard, I realised that I did not know how I was going to have the other characters in the film be acted. This caused stress as the deadline loomed closer, and I wondered how I would fill these roles.
In order to solve this issue, I decided to use cardboard painted with acrylic for the additional characters instead. I felt that having the main character be the only real-life human added a sense of surrealism, as well as the idea that the plot is āfrom their point of viewā. In addition to this, people with autism often feel ādisconnectedā from other people, and I feel this separate āplane of existenceā with 2D vs 3D illustrates this idea in an interesting way.
The character at 0:47 having a sudden expression change was important as it shows the main character trying to grabble with a complex emotional encounter, which is considered a struggle for some with autism.
With the characters being made out of cardboard, I had the worry that this would come across as too jarring to the viewer. To solve this, and to make the overall film feel like it had a cohesive style, I decided to make more elements out of cardboard.
Items like the phone, egg, toothbrush, etc. were made out of cardboard as well. I believed it would be funny to have these mundane elements, that would be way easier to have the real-world items, be recreated. The prop creation was the most time intensive part of the project, but I think it was worth it. When the screening of the film happened, the props were the most complimented aspect by the audience in attendance.
In the film, early on, I have a moment where I flip an egg, purposely showing the cardboard underside. This is to reveal to the audience that I am not hiding the fact that these elements are cardboard ā this works as a way to let them in on the silliness.
To help with cohesion for scenes where no props were present, the backgrounds are also acrylic on cardboard. These were added by using chromakeying. The painted areas are purposely small and zoomed in, to make the fact that they have texture and are cardboard more apparent.
The book in the film had two versions, one which was a āprop bookā, and one that I bound.
The prop book was a cover and back, with painted cardboard sides to resemble paper, and three DVD cases in the middle.
Because the bound book contains pages that were filmed, including the book, this needed to be created after the prop book scenes took place.
In order to match the Scrabble description of the book being āfinely rustedā, I followed a tutorial by Treasure Books (2023) using cinnamon to create faux rust. This, on top of the book also being obviously cardboard I believed was a fine compromise.
In the middle of this production, with a deadline looming over, was my wedding. I am so happy that the whole process was easy.
[Only while writing this piece had it dawned on me that my filmmaking and married life have been so overlapped.]
The film was shot on a Sony Alpha 6400 with a SELP1650 lens, and a fisheye shot was done with a 7 Artisans 7.5mm 1:2:8 ED lens. A Sony GP-VPT2BT grip was also used in many scenes to allow for filming while a light was being held.
Two āEMART 60 LEDā lights were used to light up the scenes, and a āNeewer 5āx7' Greenscreenā was used for chromakeying.
Some elements of the storyboard needed to be adapted to make the filming process easier. Firstly, a printed breakdown was made of each scene with what happens in terms of editing, effects, sounds, and props present, etc.
For the scenes that were included within the book, a chronological edit of the storyboard was made.
There were moments when parts of the production didnāt go to plan, and as such improvisation had to happen. For example, When the book was put into shrubbery at 2:20 in the film, originally it was meant to be pulled out by string. However, during filming, the string kept snapping. As such, we made the book float behind the main character instead.
The editing process was turbulent for a few reasons. Primarily, due to Vegas Pro 18 crashing every few hours, however this is unfortunately an aspect to be expected.
The editing process was useful, because it really allowed me to consider which moments were important to the narrative, which I donāt think I would have realised if I handed the work off to another person to edit.
The original cut of āBroodiest Flunkeyā was 4 minutes long, and as such 25% of the footage needed to be trimmed down in order to be within the 3-minute window required for submission.
The music at the start of the film is āToc de matinadesā by Rafael Caro (2016), and is Catalonian folk music which is played in the streets early in the morning to wake up people so they can get ready for celebrations. Since this was the day that the main character learnt to be kind to themselves, and that it starts with them waking up, I thought it was appropriate. Also, the tone shift from positive music to more eerie and atmospheric music I felt made the transition feel more contrasted, and as such have more impact.
The sounds of the Scrabble pieces moving was made by moving a container filled with Lego.
With this, the film was finished and rendered. I decided to keep the film internal until Cinaesthesia 2, as associating its premier with the event felt special. This process of keeping videos unavailable until an in-person premier is a practice I feel makes attending an event feel more worthwhile.
Due to the large amount of footage available,Ā I decided to make a behind the scenes videoĀ to both commemorate the experience, and as an excuse to remove all the footage from my PC without feeling too bad about it being harder to access.
Cinaesthesia 2 took place on 23rd March 2024, and was a lot of fun. Members of my cohort attended which was greatly appreciated.
I would say that the reaction to the screening was extremely positive.
I worried that the subject of autism may have been a bit out of place, or that I would have felt āotheredā, but then again punk environments have always embraced those that were seen as on the ārimā of society.
I was part of a Q&AĀ after the screening, and this was my first time I would talk about my work in a public forum like this. There was something really special about this I felt, and it made me want to talk about my work with others more in the future.
It overall was a great night, which made me excited for the future. I met so many cool and talented people, who have stuck around in the peripheries of my life for several months now.
Also, Abi Ali, one of the filmmakers present, stopped me after the show to say my work was her favourite, and guess what, her work was my favourite too.
SO YEAH! This is where it all began. Or rather, where I arbitrarily decided it began. Has it even started yet? Find out next time, on Dragon Ball Z!!
