#matthew lessner

The Woods Teaser Two

Official Selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival

Director: Matthew Lessner Producers: Jett Steiger and Max Knies DP: Wyatt Garfield Production Designer: Erin Staub

Greencard Pictures, Team G and Monte Lomax

Sundance Screening Info

http://sundance.slated.com/2011/films/thewoods_sundance2011

http://www.joinusinthewoods.com

© 2011 Monte Lomax

Raveonettes “Last Dance”

With: Ali Lee and Drew Hinckley

Director: Matthew Lessner Producer: Jett Steiger Director of Photography: Wyatt Garfield

Production Designer: Megan Fenton Art Director: Erin Staub Additional Art Department: Brian DaVila and Martha Dame Cary

Gaffer: Kevin Phillips Key Grip: Matthew Harfield

1st AC: Dylan Johnson 2nd AC: Scott Johnson

Wardrobe Stylist: Krissie Torgerson M…

Fools Gold “Surprise Hotel”

Director: Matthew Lessner Producer: Tim Clark and Brian DaVila Director of Photography: Wyatt Garfield

Art Department: Brian DaVila

1st AC Day 1: Ian Congdon 1st AC Day 2: Scott Johnson 2nd AC: Brian Freesh Key Grip: Matt Harfield Gaffer: Jeff Powers Jib Operator: Joe Tamel

http://www.montelomax.com http://www.teamgproductions.com http://www.vimeo.com/channels/teamg

American citizens are tarnished by consumerism, even if unbeknownst to them; its difficult to tell when people decided to pledge allegiance to products, but this shift manifested itself through people's overwhelming concern towards the rising prices of gas and Taco Bell rather than towards others. Director Matthew Lessner's enlightening exploration of the American condition presents itself in his poignantly satirical, barely 6-minute short “By Modern Measure.”

The plot is elementary: boy meets girl. Boy tells girl that she looks like someone out of a photograph he's seen on the internet. A day is spent exploring the deserts of middle-of-nowhere Southern California and bonding over their mutual love for Mountain Dew. They find out that “they both listed Che Guevara as a personal hero, citing him as revolutionary, although neither could say exactly why.” After spending much of the day together, throughout which the girl has masterfully consumed 73 cans of Mountain Dew, they learn little about one another. Much like the typical American, they are attracted to the others personal preferences rather than mutual feelings. They exchange Myspace addresses, but their desire to continue the relationship is ambiguous. The story is done ironically, brilliantly, and in a manner so hilarious that one might question what his or her movie or fast food preferences says of themselves.

Juxtaposed with images of a budding romance are subtitles, read by a monotonous French sociologist, describing the sad realities of the world. While the tone of the film is comedic, their inclusion hints at Lessner's solemn underlying theme. Being that their greatest concern is their inability to purchase a motorcycle or to agree on a favorite General Mills cereal, the couple appears wholly unaware of the war and corruption plaguing the rest of the world. Lessner presents them in an isolated paradise seemingly detached from gruesome reality, showing a much larger problem on a much smaller scale. The dialogue is never broken by the random interjections, much like their day trip in never interrupted by the fact that a group of young Arabs died in an explosion in Baghdad that day. While Israel continues to bomb the Gaza Strip, they continuing laughing and frolicking.

The abnormal use of sound in the film blurs the line between drama and documentary, yet makes the story all the more intriguing. By using strictly non-diegetic sound, it appears as though the story of the couple is being told for them and they lack total control. They are surrounded by the products and brands that rule their lives and do not even have voices to speak up against it. The couple is wholly ambivalent, and the narrator presents them as such. It is easy to relate to the couple, not only because of similar tastes in films and music, but because as Americans, we often lose our voice to the capitalism embedded into our system.

The documentary-feel is continuted through the camerawork, which is stark and amateur, or intentionally appears so. The final few shots are probably the longest in the film, yet they are of landscape and an airplane and last only 2 seconds each. They are shaky, implying Lessner's usage of a handheld camera. It is very art-house, so if not in the mood for flickering, seemingly random images most of the time, this short can be hard to digest.

In making the film, Lessner borrows heavily from the directors of French New Wave, using frequent jump cuts, grainy black-and-white film, and random interjections to make sociopolitical statements much like Godard, Truffaut, and Chabrol had done. Lessner manages to Americanize it to the extreme: he focuses directly on how labels and products can affect human relationships to such an extent that they blind people from expressing real emotion. Using rapid jump cuts and rarely lingering on one scene, Lessner expresses the urgency of his concern effectively. Mostly, he just heeds the viewers a warning.

22. The Woods (2011) by Matthew Lessner

A strange, really low-budget film exploring the relationship between young adults, technology, and isolationism.

Official Selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival

Director: Matthew Lessner Producers: Jett Steiger and Max Knies DP: Wyatt Garfield Production Designer: Erin Staub