(Even if I didn't get in, I'm still proud of the pictures!)
Treat this page like a DVD. Watch the "film" first, then scroll back up to read the commentary along with it. If you have any comments, go back to the main page and post them in my guestbook. I'd love to know what you think.
While I was preparing some of my applications to various film schools, I discovered that one school, Boston University, required you to do a project along with the normal written parts of their application. The assignment involved taking a series of nine pictures that together told a story that conveyed an emotion. It was our choice what emotion we wanted to convey and how we wanted to convey it.
I considered several options for the project, including Loneliness, Determination, Boredom, Depression, and Nostalgia. I first wrote out my ideas for each of these options, going so far as to storyboard my ideas for Loneliness. I wanted a specific setting for Determination that wasn't going to be available for me to work with. The "story" of those pictures was going to involve a broken-down car and a long walk under the hot sun to an exit that turns out not to have any service stations. Since it was early February at the time, I didn't really feel comfortable asking someone to have to stand in the cold and simulate being overheated and exhausted yet still pressing on to a goal.
The idea I had for Nostalgia wasn't really going to pan out either, simply because it was going to be too much work. I wanted to capture that feeling with a series of pictures that were more like a montage, things like a merry-go-round, fireflies at dusk, a lost love remembered, etc. I also was having trouble trying to think of a framework to put it in, so I just moved on to something else.
When the time came to take the pictures, I asked my brother to come over to my apartment so he could be the subject for the pictures. I shot all of Boredom, but eventually after I got the film developed, I decided to go with another option because, unfortunately, I'd done my job TOO well. The pictures were too bland and just didn't stand out.
Nate and I shot all of Boredom and Depression, and a few pictures I had planned as part of Loneliness, in about two hours one Tuesday afternoon. For the rest of the Loneliness pictures, we were going to need a female model as well, so I asked my friend Heather to do it. Heather was perfect for what I had planned, because I needed someone with a muse-like beauty that, once she's not around anymore, might easily inspire feelings of longing and sadness in those she left behind. But unfortunately Heather does not live in Cape anymore, and I had to wait for a weekend that she could come up here and my brother could also stay in town. Their two schedules never really coincided, so I had to go with my other friend Doorhinge as the male subject in the Loneliness pictures, planning to reshoot those that my brother had already done with him instead.
The night of the shoot went a little awry when the locale of the planned pictures, my friend Marc's house, was unavailable. I had to use the duplex my office mate Diana lives in as my exterior shots, and her street wasn't lit very well. Very few of the pictures we shot that night turned out due to it being so dark, even though I had bought a bright blue light to use to simulate darkness in the pictures while still giving me enough light for the camera to work properly. Those pictures that the camera didn't mess up just wouldn't work (for different reasons altogether), and I was rather disappointed (since Loneliness was what I considered my really GOOD idea and the rest just fallback plans).
Luckily my fallback plan for Depression turned out great. I had planned the shots of Loneliness, Depression and Boredom around the fact that I might be able to reuse some of one set to tell another emotion. So what ended up being my set of pictures, the ones I sent in with my application and which you are seeing here, are mostly from the Depression shoot, with a few others thrown in too.
So I decided to post the pictures here for two reasons. First I posted them because some of the people in the shots wanted to see them all together as a whole unit, but my second reason is simply that I'm proud of them. They turned out a lot better than I could have hoped for given the circumstances, and when I mailed them off I felt confident that my application would do well, based on the merit of these photos.
I also liked that I was able with this series to not only tell a story, one that I feel conveys its emotions very well, but I was also able to use some of the montage techniques I had intended to use with Nostalgia. The first, second, and third pictures really demonstrate this technique, I think. We see him writing what could be a letter to a friend, but when we see the next photo of the pills on the countertop, we realize that it must be a suicide note.
I was a bit worried that people might take this photo too literally, and not realize that it was intended to be within his head. But the third photo clearly shows Nate's reaction to this thought that has invaded his mind; he is shocked and overwhelmed by what he's planning on doing. Yet despite his feelings, he presses on and continues to write the note in picture four.
I really like the presence of his watch in both of these pictures. In picture three it is blurred, as if his emotions have so overpowered him that his sense of time has slipped away. Then in picture four, he is composed again, almost resigned to his fate, and his watch is again clearly visible. Time again has control over him, pressing him onward to the bitter end. It was all purely accidental, as I didn't tell him to pose that way. but the effect is still nice.
We move right from the note to a picture of Heather (one of the only Loneliness shots that turned out well). Heather looks absolutely beautiful in this shot, and she's got the warmest smile imaginable. Yet there is darkness creeping down from the top of the picture, adding a hint of foreboding. As one of the Loneliness photos, this picture was going to represent one of the happy times he had had with this beautiful girl of his dreams, but by the end of the series she would have left him (hence the presence of the door in the background). In this series instead, placing it directly after the shot of his hand writing the note, it makes it seem as if she is who the note is written to.
However, the presence of the next picture, the "jail cell" shot, makes it seem as if perhaps he is thinking of her while in his state of depression, as if she might be his REASON for suicide. Whichever is the case is up to the viewer to interpret; I like it either way. The "jail cell" picture is my favorite of the whole series, because of the way it's set up. First of all, we are no longer inside the apartment with him; there is now distance between us, physically as well as emotionally. The bars are an obvious metaphor for his feelings of imprisonment by his feelings, and I especially like how the bars are reflected in the glass to add more to that feeling of entrapment. Luckily my brother is a great actor, and he was able to portray a different kind of sadness in this photo. It's not the deperate sadness of photo three; it is the sadness of one who has been sad for a long time, a sadness that aches within but cannot be expressed externally, is too ingrown to let out. He is definitely resigned in this photo. I was able to get this one without a flash and it turned out wonderfully.
Pictures seven and eight then are the coda, the slow build-up to the final shot. It was very purposeful that I did not put him physically in any of these shots. While we may have suddenly been transported back inside, Nate is no longer present. In shot seven, we see that the note is done and that the chair is pushed back, but he is not there. Before we can even wonder where he might be, we move on to shot eight and understand. I like that he's on tiptoe in the picture; it really makes you feel a sense of inevitability. You know what is to come in the next photo, but you dread looking at it. His life is frozen in place mere seconds before it is to end in the final picture, shot nine, with the chair overturned and the shoes hanging in the air. I would have like to have gotten more shadow on the ground for that final picture, but we had to work with what we could. (In case you're wondering, Nate was standing behind me as I took that photo, holding his shoes out so just the bottoms of them were in the frame.)
As I said before, I think they turned out REALLY well (my mom couldn't even look at them after the third picture, they made her feel it so strongly). Big thanks go out to Nate for being my model and for going above and beyond the call of duty with his acting ability in these shots. Heather too did wonderfully and I was very lucky to have her photo to include there, since I feel it is the glue that holds the whole piece together. Without her the sadness has no reason behind it, and so we would have trouble identifying with it if she were not there.
Also thanks should go out to Sarah, Diana, Ryan Harper and a girl who happened to be working the counter at the Registrar's office the day I mailed the pictures. I had been considering a different option for the pictures, replacing them with others, but they served as a sort of test audience for me and convinced me this was the way to go. I had originally wanted to put another picture of Nate in between the note and the picture of Heather, to clearly illustrate he was thinking of her, but they told me it wasn't necessary. Plus his sadness in that picture, while really well-portrayed, was a more violent sadness than the calm depression he has after the photo of Heather, so the emotions didn't fit. I would have also had to replace the photos of the chair pushed back and his feet on the chair with one that combined both of those things, and it would have rushed the emotion a little too much.
Anyway, thanks for taking a look and please let me know what you think of them via my guestbook before you leave!
