Property 13

Here’s the latest offering from Zimmerscope Filmlets:

I created the film for a college class at Hamline University during this recent fall semester. The assignment called for demonstrating how images create meaning. Basically, we could do just about anything for the project except writing a standard paper. Most students made Powerpoint Presentations or storyboards. Four of us created short films. Mine is titled Property 13, and if you decide to watch it, be sure to stay tuned after the credits for an outtakes reel (I did not include the outtakes when I turned it in to my professor, but I appended it onto the ending for your viewing pleasure).

If the filmlet seems outside my norm, or if there are odd bits in it that don’t seem to make sense, just know that these things are included in the film due to my efforts to meet the assignment’s criteria.

See, with this project, I intended to demonstrate three primary ways in which visual imagery creates meaning.

First, I wanted to demonstrate that a film can land in the horror genre using very little horrific imagery. Hardly any frame of my filmlet is truly horrific; instead, many visuals simply create unease or creepiness.

Second, my project demonstrates how visual media can create meaning by lying to the viewers. This is done in two ways: by editing the film together so that viewers connect images that, in reality, are untrue; and by suggesting actions that appear off-screen. For example, just as there really is not a large industrial complex under the shack in Cabin in the Woods, my film lies to viewers by editing images so that Zelda’s home appears to have a fireplace, and so that Orville appears to have an office in a skyscraper. And just as many horror films imply some of their horrific elements, my film demonstrates that lying on film can cause viewers to create images in their minds more horrific than what is depicted. Specifically, no one is shown being murdered, but viewers will (I believe) claim that my film includes three murders.

Third, many films we viewed in class included camera movements, angles, and zooms that were not essential to the story, but that increased tension and disorientation. Most notable was the opening scene of Halloween. The Shining and Blair Witch likewise included extensive camera movements. So I attempt to create meaning by including camera movements that, while not necessary, lend an aura of horror to the film. I tried to demonstrate unusual camera movements and angles that create a violation of the boundaries we experience in real-life and in non-horror cinema. Property 13, then, also disrupts our expectations for the narrative by violating how we normally expect to view people and events.

Finally, I attempted to include several tropes that pervade to the horror genre. This includes: foreshadowing, humor, religious iconography, coldness, disruption of the body, excessive – or even campy – imagery, the suggestion of a history and repetition of the horrors, an affirmation of conservative mores (specifically: hanky-panky leads to punishment), and a slide whistle.

I received an A on the project, with my professor saying (in part):

“A ridiculously fun, ambitious film project — full of moments I enjoyed, maybe most particularly the stroking of the mannequin head.  It was clear you were having fun, but as clearly you know your way around techniques and with an incisive wit can enact and parody and amplify those techniques to tease out how and why they work.  The film was really just a delight.  The moustache after 20 days (and hours and …) was a nice touch, too.”