Josh, the Australian

Josh is an exchange student from Australia and has just arrived in his new dorm. He is not sure whether the people he will live with will be odd savages or normal human beings. Only time will tell.

Bryn

This is a film still from Bryn, which is about a girl who has an unhealthy habit of obsessing about other girls who may be more liked than her and who she deems as better. She rids her life of threats like them by finding their weaknesses and defeating them mentally. She watches them when they don't know, as demonstrated in this film still, and plots against them for her benefit.  

Little Red

Not all is what it seems in this tragedy, as it follows both a love stricken Werewolf (Chris Johnson) and the murderous Little Red (Priscilla Neurohr). Unbeknownst to her actions, the Werewolf selflessly attempts to save the love interest (Josiah Poole) of Little Red after he was knocked unconscious, only to be run down by the cold and calculating werewolf killer. The male gaze is no longer powerful, the monster is no longer threatening, and therefore, "it is violently punished".

Don't Quit Your Day Job

This is a still from my dark humor/drama Don't Quit Your Day Job about an aspiring singer/songwriter who travels to LA to fulfill her dream of becoming a superstar only to find that she is completely without talent and self-identity. 

Zoe

This is the last shot of my movie about a girl named Zoe who faces numerous problems in her life. She loses her friends and mother because of her unhealthy relationship with her boyfriend, and is forced to give up her child for adoption because she lacks the funds to raise a child on her own. The major theme in the film is that Zoe's happiness is dependent on men, so by the end of the movie she takes actions for her own life and decides to leave everything behind to seek a new life of happiness. Zoe is waiting for the next bus out of the city, she has left everything behind, and ponders what awaits her in the next chapter of her life. I focused on the male gaze to accentuate her shift in agency by the end of the film.

Vertigo 2.0

A long way down coming from a even longer road up to the top. A businessman, always in a black classy suit, working day to day in a job he worked hard to reach success but has never felt a high feeling of passion for, only the road to high success. For the higher you go, the darker you become and the lighter the bottom looks. The praise of climbing the ladder of success versus the failure of staying at the top of the cliff.

Beautiful Chaos

"Beautiful Chaos"
This still is a close-up shot of a torch in the peaceful moments before burning down Clara's childhood home.  The fire expresses her rage, while also showing the beauty in her revolt.  It also visually translates the concept of the actante, taken from Spanish teatro.

Inspired by a line from Brand New's song "Archers".  "Who do you carry the torch for, my young man?/Do you believe in anything?/Do you carry it around just to burn things to the ground?"

Model:
Leanor Kurucz
Fire
My Humble Abode

Red or Black?

In this image, The Woman in Black (Alicia Humphrey)  has come to see her lover, but found him in the arms of another woman. In the context of the family melodrama, The Man’s (Brandon Dougherty) affection are divided by familial obligation. Should he choose the woman he truly loves or The Woman in Red (Joelle Montoya) who will maintain his social standing and help his family regain financial stability?  

Dreams Unrealized

This is the last shot of a film about a girl who has felt trapped inside her small town her entire life. She has repeatedly tried, in vain, to escape. After a period of apparent contentment, a framed picture that represents her dreams and ambitions has fallen off the wall. The audience is deprived of the opportunity to see the look on the main character’s face. This film still embodies such aspects of counter cinema as estrangement, foregrounding, aperture, and unpleasure. It also contains the ambiguity that David Bordwell connects with art cinema.           

Ethnography of Easter Island

For my still, I chose a photo I took in Easter Island, Chile. I talked specifically about Ethnography and how in King Kong, it is used to create a horror film. My film would do the opposite; it would celebrate the differences in culture.

Sublimely Awful

A couple is reunited after their struggles with society or another oppressive force are resolved.  

They find peace in each others' arms as a flower blooms by their feet to show their new beginning.  

With happy ending nearly complete, why is a cloud of "awful" raining down on them?  

A representation of the devaluation of language through our ignorance to its evolution and changing

 meanings, this still offers a challenge to question what do our words really connote?

Lucy Lovehardt's Nevermore

 Within Lauren P. Vining's still from her movie "Lucy Lovehardt's Nevermore"  the Science Fiction/ Horror film of 2015 movie is about a young vampiress that has come back from the underworld seeking revenge on those that brutally murdered her and her lesbian lover Ludmilla. Lucy has been given the gift of what is known as "the curse" from Victor, a vampire that took pity upon her whilst he was watching her and her lover die. He decides to give her a second chance at life, though he is too late for Ludmilla whom is already dead when he arrives on the scene. When Lucy was a mortal there were only two things she wanted in life: Ludmilla's love and red roses. That dream for Lucy, however, is nevermore, due to the biases of a few that couldn't understand her love for Ludmilla, and now she's back to get revenge on those who took away the one thing that mattered most to her in life. Within this film still I focused on the close up, counter cinema and Haskells the "superfemale/superwoman". My good friend Joshua Lewton is a professional photographer and helped me to take this photograph of myself in gothic drag, so props to having friends that have studied photography.

Shatter

This still is from the film Shatter. It depicts two homosexual make firefighters forced to live a lie in a society that frowns upon homosexuality. The film, as well as this till focuses on what happens when the male gaze is used in contrast with queer cinema. I wanted to use what appears to be a POV shot to help include the audience as well as use different dimensions of the shot as well.

Everyone's Worse Fear.

For this still, I decided to use the concept in Wollen's essay on counter cinema. This depicts me overdosing as the last images I will ever see are my drug induced hallucinations. Also, my brother is seen in the window behind me looking at the camera and begging the audience to help me. I chose foregrounding and narrative intransitivity specifically for my film concepts. 

Discovery

My final still is from a horror movie that centers a psychotic killer who stalks and kills women. This particular one of his victims is found inside a dumpster after being strangled. In my shot I focused on the male gaze and scopophilia. The women is played by Adrien Hoff.

Nothing in the Dark

They were searching an abandoned house and found the creature sealed in the basement. Now its loose and only one of them is left.

She's a Looker

The above image is a still from Drew Goter's groundbreaking directorial debut, She's a Looker (2015). She's a Looker is a taut psychological drama that follows Audrey Albrecht (Taylor Bosworth), a functioning paranoid schizophrenic whose symptoms worsen after she starts receiving attention from her male peers. Audrey combats this anxiety by planting surveillance cameras around her college campus and spending her nights observing the very people that she fears being observed by. She's a Looker engages Linda Williams's theory of the female gaze by likening the female voyeur to the monster and by depicting Audrey's gaze as an act of self-punishment. However, the film also challenges both Williams's and Laura Mulvey's theory of visual pleasure in cinema by presenting a female who is quite capable of obtaining sadistic pleasure - albeit non-sexual pleasure - from voyeurism.

On The Rocks

    Here we have some guy(Alex Tuck) at a bar trying to hit on the girl(Whitney VanBaale) next to him. Judging by the salt shaker, he's not doing to well. I wanted to convey 'drunk' through the camera, so the blurry sense of motion is intentional. I was trying to use 'the gaze' in a subjective way. Through the beer's color and clarity and the man's drunken aggression, my goal was to put the focus on the female subject and depict her in a fetishistic and voyeuristic way, simultaneously. The drunken nature of the picture was also used to remove the man's control (castration), but maintain his perspective of the woman and the situation.

Mirror Image

The image represents a young girl (Caylie) obsessed with the way she looks.  She can't even be in nature without bringing her makeup and mirror and doing touch ups. I wanted to capture just the image of her face in the mirror to show how controlled she is by an image. 

First Kiss

This is a film still of Briana and Maria. They are best friends but have been forced to suppress their love for one another because of society's stance on gay love. This is their first kiss. I chose to focus on objects of desire and the suppression of emotions present in "My Own Private Idaho," particualrly in Mike's unreturned love for Scott who chooses to take the path of the successful heterosexual male.