Chase Scene

Director’s Reflection: Chase Scene

            When I started this assignment, I didn’t have any personal connection to it whatsoever.  I had recently seen the movie It Follows, and I liked the idea of having a monster that chased you slowly without ever stopping and that no one else could see.  For some reason, the film had made a big impact on me, so I wanted to replicate the film’s creepy atmosphere in my film.  My brother had also recently made a scary plague doctor mask for Halloween, and I wanted to feature it in my film.  I just wanted to shoot a scary chase scene, and that was it.  But after thinking, I tried to find a personal connection to the material.  I thought about why I wanted to emulate this film so badly.  And I was able to come up with an answer.  For my whole life, I’ve struggled with Tourette’s syndrome.  I have an aunt who struggles with Bipolar disorder.  And I recently found out that my cousin, who is only a little older than I am, has struggled with schizophrenia for most of his life.  So mental disorders have been a prominent part of my life for a long time.  I have always had difficulty explaining my tics to other people.  Close friends and family aren’t bothered by it anymore, but whenever I meet someone new, I eventually have to explain my situation or lie about it.  So in a way, I’ve been running from a monster that only I can see for a long time.  After finding this connection, I became excited.  I couldn’t wait to shoot my film because now it meant something to me.  It wasn’t just an assignment anymore.  It was a symbolic representation of struggling with mental disorder.  So I decided to imitate It Follow’s use of deep space, framing the protagonist center frame in order to portray this feeling.  We also shot a lot of dolly shots on a glide cam to better simulate someone being chased from behind.         

            There were a few technical mishaps.  We had problems with checking out the Black Magic camera, so we ended up shooting it on Brett’s Canon 6D instead.  Also, after we left the park to shoot in the next location, the mic on the camera stopped working and we had no sound.  This made me sad because I originally intended to include more sounds of the main character running, gasping, and screaming bloody murder (which my actor, Danny Brown, did splendidly).  It wasn’t a huge setback, though, since the dialogue in the beginning was the only essential part of the film that needed to have sound.  The initial cut was almost 3 ½ minutes long, so I spent a lot of time cutting it down to under 3 minutes.  This actually helped the film tremendously because I was forced to trim a lot of the fat and reduce it to what was essential to tell the story, although I feel like the opening card scene is a little bit choppy because of it.  There are also quite a few continuity errors in the film.  During one of the shots, I didn’t notice that Danny had put his glasses back on, and after we finished, he realized this and told us.  But since the shot was the most physically demanding, we decided to just move on and not worry about it.  Also, because it was so cold outside, I sent two of my actors home as soon as I thought they were done, not realizing that we still needed to get a wide pan of the park and the pavilion, so we did the shot even though none of our actors were there anymore.  I also fear that the second half of the film relies too heavily on music and not enough on visual in order to create suspense.  Besides these technical limitations, incompetency on my part, and the lack of sound, I feel like we were able to accomplish my original idea.  I am forever indebted to Brett, who did an amazing job with the demanding Steadicam shots that were required for the film and gave great input about lighting and lenses.  So even though the film has some problems, I still feel like we were able to put together a decent film that demonstrates the horror of being affronted with terror that only you can see