Film 7 - Daydream

Director's Reflection:

The inception of Project Daydream came in 2015, just after my third short film, Project Continuum. I wanted to change genres, after doing a thriller, a horror, and an action film, the next logical genre was a drama/comedy. The biggest issue in pre-visualization was that I never decided if it was a comedy or a drama. One of the most important aspects of a film is it's consistent TONE, and I didn't have one. It never left the early stages of pre-production in 2015.

After the mission, I hadn't made a film in almost 3 years. I had the itch, so I dusted off Daydream and wrote a draft of the script. I found myself a producer and we worked quickly to get to production before I left for school. I was rusty in making films, to say the least. Some poor planning landed us in a difficult spot when one of my actresses moved away with only 70% of our footage shot. Despite our best efforts to save it, Project Daydream died in my arms that day, and frankly made me hesitant to direct a short film again for a long time.

Two years later, almost five years since we came up with the idea, I decided to direct a scene from the script for my 319 final. This time, I was "in shape" directing shorts and came at the film with a much more purposeful approach. My DP and I actually talked at length this time about the feel and visual style of the piece. It was difficult to re-visualize the scene in my head, having shot the same scene two years prior. But I found a look I liked, and away we went.

I wanted to communicate the difference between dreams and reality in this piece. I recognized in retrospect that I wrote this script in a time where I personally objectified women, not in a sexual sense but in the sense that I didn't understand their motivations and did not seek to understand them. I simply felt things and wrote a story about how I felt and what I yearned for at the time. I feel this is why the female characters feel flat in the scene. I purposefully wanted the unnamed beautiful girl to feel this way, simply a mirage of an idealized fantasy to this boy’s mind. Of course, I never want to insinuate that this girl is actually a shallow character; I gave her a name and wrote up a whole backstory for her.

The flaw in this piece I feel comes from a mandatory decision in post. The coverage of Taft was super out of focus, and I decided to just stick to the two-shot. The issue with this is that unconsciously, I had the characters blocked in such a way that favored Taft, and not Courtney. This caused for the audience to not connect emotionally to her, as I had previously wanted.

Storytelling is a mixture of so many different elements. Working with actors was key to telling this story, and I was blessed with some incredible performances. I learned that when a performance is working, you shut up and let it happen.

The art really made this piece for me. It changed the whole dynamic of the scene. At times it was overpowering to the image and detracted from the story, but the aesthetic it created was well worth it. The idea that cinematography is enhanced by the production design was again affirmed to me.

Working with wo DP's actually turned out to be a blessing. I feel a slight tonal shift between day one and day two, which fits perfectly for the story, which is great.

Screening with the audience was really fun. They laughed at the parts I wanted them to laugh at, and not at other times, which is always a relief. I think the theme wasn't the best communicated, for the reasons stated above, but overall it felt like they enjoyed it.

Will I ever make the whole short? I'm not sure at his point. I'd have to rework the script; I'm not sure how much I believe in he messages it propagates at this point and a director has to believe in a script before he dedicates himself to the vision.

-Tanner Liddiard