Joy and Love Behind the Scenes
“When people are in fear, they don’t want to go to work… If I ran my set with fear, I would get 1 percent, not 100 percent, of what I get. And there would be no fun in going down the road together. And it should be fun. In work and in life, we’re all supposed to get along.” —David Lynch
The labor-intensive collaboration of a film set—in which a collective slowly ushers intangible ideas into visible reality, one moment at a time—demands a massive amount of time, energy, and personal investment from all involved. As in a team sport, many minds merge to work as one, pursuing an outcome only possible through their successful co-functioning.
Despite all this effort that goes into making images beautiful, the most beautiful part of filmmaking is sometimes what happens unseen, behind the camera, in the process. Love is a verb, and in film school, the efforts of fellow students to support one another can hold profound, unforgettable meaning.
Film sets turn toxic when they reproduce the same social relations, structures, and logics of our larger society — a racist-capitalist cishetero-patriarchy too often organized around principles of domination, competition, individualistic ego, and control over others.
Feminist film practices offer alternative ways of working, organized around an opposite set of values—care, equity, inclusion, multiculturalism, mutual respect, and joy in the magic of collaboration.
I feel tremendously lucky to have found a community of filmmakers at Syracuse University who care for one another and embody principles of healthy collaboration in their practice. I am also lucky to occasionally capture the joy in this process on camera.
For this ongoing personal art project, drawing from the sprawling archive of my phone’s photo library, I select brief, candid moments in time in which I witnessed spontaneous gestures & expressions of love in the process of artistic collaboration among my friends and collaborators, often at the end of a successful shot or a long day on set. I animated on top of these moments one frame at a time, working in very slow motion—trying to externalize the bright, vivid feelings I remember from being present there, and paying tribute to the beauty of a joyful way of working.
Samantha’s Martini
On the set of her thesis film, The Trouble with Being Human (2024), director Sam Bray made a personalized friendship bracelet for every member of her crew. Here, she is seen directing the final shot of the day, celebrating the adorable performance of Meilin Luo under her ghost sheet, and calling a wrap at the end of a long weekend of work. Also present in frame are Ghazal Yousefi, Alex Cao, Sarah Aristy, DaSol Park, Michaela Kwak, and Mia Stegner
Mmakgosi at Wrap
3-second loop [Description Forthcoming]
Ryan and Crew in the Woods
3-second loop [DESCRIPTION FORTHCOMING]