My World, My Work

My advanced studies in the Film and Television Masters in Fine Arts (FTMA) Program at Sacred Heart University have allowed me to expand my acting craft into my lifelong dream of becoming a filmmaker. For the past four years, I’ve been writing, acting, editing and directing my own. To edit my films I am using programs such as Adobe…… The process of splicing scenes together has expanded my perspective on how a film is made. I now find myself watching films with special attention to varying shots and sequences. In particular, I liked to use techniques for practical effects such as substitution splicing (inspired by Georges Melies) to make objects or people transform and disappear. In fact, I love to take a script and align each scene with the style and pacing that portrays my own vision of the screenplay.

While at SHU, my courses in photography and photojournalism have contributed greatly to my work as a filmmaker. Whenever I take snap a photo with my camera, I think about the environment, human expressions and emotional impact a single photo can express towards a human being. I also use photographs to tell a story through a photographic storyboard. Photography also gives us an understanding of quality and depth especially as I set up a camera deciding the angle and position that best tells the story. Maybe there should be background objects too that narrate the situation of a particular shot. 

Drawing out storyboards and writing down a shot list (the latter of which I think saves more time) has helped me plan out my own perspective of what I want my shots to look like. I always work with the angles or move around my camera to capture the emotional impact of a scene. 

In terms of my acting abilities, I have sought to diversify my range. While physical comedy has always been my strength, I do seek out roles requiring some depth as evidenced in my short scene from “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Laramie Project”. Everything from imitating the behaviors and personal stereotypes of people I know, household names, movie characters, etc. has been an obsession that can be applied for certain roles or characters in my films. An example would be Tristan Citarre, the gifted yet self-indulgent shaman in my spoof on New Age gurus, “The Consquences of Citarre”. In this short film my use of exaggerated body language or facial expressions has taken direct inspiration from silent films and comedians such as Rowan Atkinson and John Cleese. My influences from the silent genre include pacing, dramatic soundtracks, physical and emotional reactions as well as the narrative of showing and not telling. While romantic comedies constitute my primary category, in all of my films I strive to let the viewer feel what my protagonist feels in a certain situation. The emotions of a character and the tone of a movie (whether it’s funny, dark, scary, touching or whimsical) can really impact an audience members mood. Of course, effective use of lightning, music and mis-en-scene are indispensable to set the emotional tone for each film. For future videos, I’m planning on using creative techniques such as stop-motion and “animated sequences” for an opening or endings credits of a movie (especially in a comedy).