#abouttheproject

In this cerebral romance anthology, a mysterious figure influences several relationships over the course of a strange summer day. Through dialogue and dream-like situations, the film examines various complexities of young love and modern intimacy. Showcasing up and coming Chicago talent, the story follows nine relationship vignettes each written by different Chicago writers. All writers and roles involved are under the age of 30. It is our hope to celebrate our Chicago community and give opportunity to new voices. Considering this is a collaborative film about love, we want to create a positive, inclusive work environment. Moriah and Mary are passionate about creating community and valuable life experiences through the creative process of film.

PLOT SUMMARY:

In this cerebral romance anthology, a mysterious figure influences several relationships over the course of a surreal summer day in Chicago. The story features nine relationship vignettes: 

Clearwater faces growing up when he returns home after a cross-country road trip with his friend Kenosha. 

College students, Sam and Natalie examine love while exorcising Natalie from her past lovers. 

Brian confronts his aggression with the unexpected help of his co-worker Bud.

Dean navigates his breakup with the help of his engaged best friend “Mouth”.

Elle and Ava discuss their hetero-passing relationships over a strange coffee. 

Owen tries to help his roommate Jewels cathartically get rid of her ex’s stuff. 

Boon, Levin, and Abby ritually watch the waves on concrete before their anticipated three-some. 

Young couple, Ed and Louisa, discusses their relationship after fleeing their wedding. 

Childhood friends, Cassie and Lennon reconnect on a serendipitous romantic soul-baring acid trip.

SOCIAL ISSUES & INTENDED AUDIENCE:

Some of the issues we address in our film include LGBTQ+ topics, male aggression, mental health, class, abuse and intimacy. We hope that providing an authentic take on these issues provides representation to those who deal with them daily. In addition, we hope that exploring these situations in a dreamy world provides a slight distance for the viewer so they can better digest harder topics. This line of thought is in a similar vein of work like “Bojack Horseman” or “The One I Love”.

Our intended audience is young people of all gender-identity, about ages 18-29. We believe that young people will hugely benefit from seeing modern love and intimacy authentically examined by peers who are actually experiencing it, as all of our writers and characters are under 30. By having a range of perspectives in the anthology, we hope to appeal to all genders. Since all of our vignettes are about ten pages or under, we hope to cover a range of topics and P.O.V.s while appealing to the young generation’s short attention span. Also, we believe this movie will appeal to those who identify as romantic or cerebral- like those interested in the arts. In addition, the LGBTQ+ community is another target market. The film features multiple LGBTQ+ characters and writers, with the intention to cast these roles with real LGBTQ+ actors.

MOOD BOARD:

Here is the link to our Pinterest board! It features some casting ideas and inspiration behind the film.

CONTACT:

Thank you for your consideration!

Mary Lumley - [email protected]

Moriah Martel - [email protected]

Anjali Lal’s Blog

Jin Choi: Director/Cinematographer and editor Anjali Lal: Producer/ Assistant to the Director and editor

My final project for this year’s Video for the Web BAY3 module at Goldsmiths, was to make an educational campaign on the effects off too much screen time.

 My partner for this project, Jin Choi, and I both noticed that we spend up to 6-7 hours a day looking at a screen. Be it for work, tv watching or scrolling through Facebook and other sites, we both started to realise that it consumed a large part of our day. We then spoke with our peers to ask them what their daily screen usage is like and we came to the conclusion that teens and younger adults who have smart phones, laptops or even tv’s at home, tend to spend a lot of their free time on their devices. We did some research and reading to find out more about how screen time risks mental health and found these two very informative articles: “Screen Time v Play Time: what tech leaders won’t  let their own kids do” -The Guardian and “Limit children’s screen time, expert urges” - BBC

After gathering enough intel and insight we decided to go ahead with an educational campaign that would be broken down into 3 mini series. The first series was of 5 young adults aged between 18-25 (which is also our intended target audience) who responded to a set of questions about their general screen time usage and they reflected on how their screen time has an effect on their day-to-day activities. The second series featured a specialist who we interviewed for our film and the objective of the second series was to shed light on the social, emotional and physical effects related to too much screen time. Lastly, our third series listed alternatives to screen time. Other than spending  free time on a screen, why not go for a run or read a book? Listing out the alternatives was equally important so that any of our viewers who are constantly on their devices can learn of other ways to spend their time. In the last part of series 3 we introduced our campaign and its connection to social media. Jin and I wanted to add an element of digital visibility by incorporating the hashtag. As theory suggests: 

“The web offers more participation-more power and involvement- to the user than TV does to its audiences” (Coyer, Dowmunt and Fountain, 2007: 5).

Since our video is intended for the web, why not offer some form of viewer participation. We could possibly build and grow the #Offscreen tag by encouraging more uses to part take. 

We ended the film by encouraging our viewers to take a selfie of themselves while consciously doing any activity (or any of the alternatives suggested in series 3) that does not involve a screen and post it to social media using the tag: ’#offscreen’. Not only would this help them make an effort to reduce their screen time but also increase our hashtag’s visibility. 

In the run-up to Flat Earth Theatre’s March 2017 production of Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson, we are inviting a varied group of scientists, artists, philosophers, thinkers, and dreamers to respond to the central question of the play – “Who are we, why are we – WHERE ARE WE?” in whatever form and context they choose. That may mean “Where are we – in the universe?” “Where are we – in the trajectory of human history?” or any other “where are we?” that comes to mind as they consider the century and more since Henrietta Leavitt came to work at Harvard in the 1890s, and the way the “big questions” in our minds have and have not changed in all that time. 

We’ll be sharing their responses to the question here on the blog, and via Flat Earth’s other social media channels. We hope they’ll inspire your thoughts and conversations, on your way to the theater and anywhere else you happen to be.

Contributors retain ownership of their individual works, and have granted Flat Earth permission to publish them as part of this project. If you have questions about the art or would like to know more about this artists and writers, please follow the links embedded in each post. Similarly, views expressed in contributor posts belong to those contributors, and may not reflect the views of other contributors to the project or of Flat Earth Theatre as a whole.

“[Sergi] Eisenstein believed that film montage could create ideas or have an impact beyond the individual images. Two or more images edited together created a [third thing] that makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts” source

What makes a film narrative?

Is montage limited to one medium (film/video)?

WACO is a film experiment that questions the constraints of traditional montage in a film context. Through user collaboration, WACO strives to build a film narrative through user created and compiled assets. 

How does it work? 

If you are interested in the project, please email [email protected]. You will then be sent an audio file and a list of visuals. Your job is to create Instagram videos of the visuals on the list. You can tag the videos with #wacofilmexperiment. You have one month to compile the videos on the list. 

These videos will be converted into GIFs and compiled into a Zeega experience. This Zeega will bring together the audio you were given at the beginning of the project and the videos you (and other users) created from the list. 

What is the audio you sent me? 

The audio is from a screenplay I wrote called WACO. After I finished writing it, voice actors were recorded reading it. This recording was treated like a radio drama by audio engineer, Jordan Cunningham. Jordan has created a cinematic experience through the audio and we are handing it off to the viewers to create the visuals. 

Will I get credit? 

YES. As a creative individual the last thing I would want to do is to take credit from another creative. Any and all content you provide to the project will be credited to you by name. 

But who are you?