I moved to the city of Pittsburgh in 2008, transferring from Shippensburg State University to the University of Pittsburgh in pursuit of my bachelor’s degree. Majoring in Film Studies at Pitt meant I could take courses at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, a local film school, through which most of my early student films were produced.
And so we begin with the first short film I was directly involved in. This incomprehensible number is called “Brief Case” because it involves a briefcase and– alright, forget it. Just watch it and be confused:
So the guy buys a briefcase from sunglasses man, opens it, and gets trapped inside in some sort of never-ending, brightly-lit hallway nightmare. That’s all clear, right? Shooting this was actually a blast; our group shot the film inside Pittsburgh Filmmakers well after closing time.
The “green” version above is the original edit, if I recall correctly. About a year later, I dug up the raw footage and made a personal edit for practice. In an effort to distinguish it from the original, I managed to make the narrative even more difficult to follow while bringing up some unused footage and messing around with different visual effects:
Did you see that? They were walking backwards. I hadn’t even heard of Twin Peaks yet.
As a fresh film student who barely knew how to focus my shots, I was entrusted with only the most ancient of Super 8 cameras for these early projects. The grimy, unpolished look of these shorts is due to both my inexperience and the quality of hardware we used.
Finally, I was entrusted with my own personal Super 8 short film project. A New Color attempts to tell the story of an amateur scientist testing the effects of colors on human emotions. Naturally, things get weird and I incorporate my first ever universal theme of student filmmaking: unnecessarily breaking the fourth wall because I do not know how to end the film.
This duo of shorts will always hold a special place in my heart. The raw visuals and inexperience shine through the confusing attempts at storytelling to remind me that we were just a bunch of college kids having fun with cameras.
A few years ago, I inherited a consumer grade Super 8 camera and an old cartridge of film from my now deceased great-grandmother. She bought it in the 1970’s for a family trip to the Grand Canyon, used it once for said trip, and never had the film developed. When I had decided to mail the old cartridge out to a service in Texas to have it processed, I found that the chemicals used to develop that particular type of Super 8 film had been long discontinued and the service was no longer offered. I still have that cartridge of undeveloped Super 8 film, tucked away in a bag somewhere, and I frequently wonder what images lay forever hidden in that emulsion.
Next time: Double trouble with my 16mm projects
My Complete Unfinished Works 