films & commentary

BFA3 1 Week Film - Have You Heard?

Have You Heard? is a One-Week Film made at CalArts as part of the One-Week Film Assignment at the beginning of the school year.

BFA2 Film - Rising/Falling 

Rising/Falling was my BFA2 Film made at CalArts. Originally, I had a very different film I was working on, but due to a lot of personal things going on in my life I scrapped it and wrote the script for Rising/Falling on the plane ride home over spring break- about a month before the film deadline. I'm sad my original film was never finished, but these two films were necessary work for me to have made at that point in my life, so ultimately I'm glad I made the change. 

Rising/Falling is a not-so-subtle metaphor for life as an artist- Rabbit representing a fear of honesty and stagnation and how they effect my art making, and Coyote representing my artistic journey and feelings of ambition and hope that have sprung up in the past couple of years. It's a deeply personal work and though very evident that these films were made in about a week and a half each, it's still something I'm proud of.

"The rabbit is me. The coyote... is also me. No they are not fursonas." - Isa, during her MidRes Review

48 Hour Film - Sting

48 Hour Films are always my favorite time of the year.  Half-parody half-completely-serious-and-self-indulgent anime, Sting is about a dramatic Beetrayal and the fight that ensues. Yes all the bee sounds/buzzes are me.

BFA1 Film - Checkmate

Checkmate was made in a month. About a month from the deadline we had an excellent guest speaker at school who inspired me to completely rethink what kind of films I want to make. At the time, my film was something very simple and basic, a noir-esq film about a girl tracking down the criminal who made a mess in the kitchen.

I then did a 180 overnight. Did 1 sheet of concept art and made an animatic in 3 days. I had decided to make a very high concept drama about the pawns sacrificed to war, the cost of death, the tragedy of love, and ultimately the necessary destruction of those in power. It's a bit of commentary on the nature of war and how it's always the soldiers/pawns who have to make the sacrifice and never the king/person in power, and the only way to end the cycle is to destroy the powers that be. It's not exactly subtle.
Also it's a love story.
​Heavily inspired by shadow puppets, chess, and Revolutionary Girl Utena.