Jane Tattersall's visit/ American Movie documentary

Through information gleaned during Jane Tattersall’s visit on Tuesday and from watching the documentary, American Movie, I learned a great deal about the process of filmmaking. After we watched Jane’s short film, “Hot Water,” she told us about all the work that was involved in creating the four-minute piece. She explained to us that the requirements were that the piece had to have something to do with water and it had to use a specific camera. When she said that it took twelve hours just to film it, I was astonished. I did not expect that it would take so many hours to film something that was only four-minutes long. She also explained how some of the details such as the pattern of the blood splatter on the wall and making the blood pool form under the victim, were not as easy to create as one would expect. Jane explained how the crew was having issues making the fake blood that they wanted to have run out from under the victim in the bathtub. The film is black and white, so the filmmakers decided to use chocolate syrup, and found that it worked much better. As for the blood spatter on the walls, the crew had to flick it onto the wall with their hands, and then wipe it off and then do it again if the spatter didn’t look quite natural enough. Another aspect of the film that I did not realize took as much work as Jane revealed it did, was the sound that had to be added in after the film has been shot. She revealed that the sounds of the knife against the table, the taps without any water, the stabbing sounds as well as various other noises were added during the post-production phase. I found that the amount of time dedicated to the small details was quite surprising. In American Movie, there were also a few details about the filmmaking process of which I was previously unaware. In this documentary, Mark Borchardt is shown creating his short film, “Coven.” The documentary showed the “behind the scenes” work and how much time is spent creating one scene. In the movie, Mark would sometimes spend several multiple days working on the same scene. Even though the film was only half an hour long, it took him over two years to complete. This was in part because he also tried to start his feature film, “Northwestern.” Although Mark never ended up completing his feature film, he did end up selling 5,100 copies of “Coven” by 2004. The American Movie documentary shows how much passion is required to finish a film independently, especially when faced with difficulties such as insufficient funds.

After hearing about the difficulties of making a film and watching the American Movie, I would probably not be interested in making my own short film. In fact, I doubt I could ever do so anyway without the help of many volunteers. Jane Tattersall, when asked if she would make another short film, responded by saying that she may, after she forgets about how much work is involved in making one. That response, combined with the constant setbacks that Mark Borchardt experienced in the documentary, have probably deterred me from making a serious short film.

In conclusion, I learned a lot about the filmmaking progress from Jane Tattersall’s visit on Tuesday and from watching the documentary, American Movie. Although the result can apparently be very satisfying, I do not think I will be venturing into the making of my own short film.