In addition to making my own films this semester, many of my friends and classmates also asked me to perform in their films. More than once, I found myself acting in two films in a single day.
Interestingly, I didn’t survive in most of the films. I’ve been killed off in my friends’ films in a plethora of creative ways including having my face bashed in with a trash can, being bound, gagged, and bled from the wrist, getting stabbed in the gut and having my throat slit, etc. And, of course, all of these involved being covered in fake blood. I’m beginning to feel like the Sean Bean of LMU.
There were days when I got up at 6:00am, got into costume, went to the set, spent a few hours working on the film, got back to my dorm, washed all the blood off me, changed into the next costume for a different film, left for that set where I was again covered in blood, and didn’t come back until late at night.
When I wasn’t covered in blood or performing in a scene that was being shot, I helped out in other ways like setting up lights or operating the camera.
Different professors have different rules for these projects, although none allow dialogue. You’ll see below that none of the films here have any sound whatsoever or a title. However, my professor, Rachel Pearl, requires not only a title, but also sound design.
In Kristen’s film (below), there was plenty of blood and I was covered in my fair share of it, but you don’t see any of it in the final cut. Talk about ending up on the cutting room floor!
Only one of the films I was in was shown, along with The Tutor at the Production 200 screening at the end of the semester and that was Mars’ second project.
