SAVINGS
Role: Creative Direction, Scriptwriting, Photography, Production
Company: Perception Pictures
Published: 2017
Originally titled Danny, Savings is a film about a psychoactive-addicted mother and nurse named Faith Soto that wakes up to the most difficult news of her life - her son's High School is the subject to a school shooting. Over the course of the film, we follow the minutes of anxiety that ripple through her life while we uncover pieces of a puzzle that suggests a mother smothered by the guilt of neglect toward her son.
This was the film that culminated my film school career at SCAD and it took me through several ups and downs; as a director with a vision I wanted to get into the brain of my main character and what she was feeling. I did a lot of research into the dark psychology of school shootings and the families involved in their network of grief. Despite this being a student film, this remains to date one of the hardest projects I've had to do mainly due to the psychological toll involved in delving into the dark waters surrounding this painful reality our media too often treats as a 'normalcy' of everyday life.
THE IDEA
A while back, came across the Ted Talk of Susan Klebold, the mother of Columbine Shooter Dylan Klebold, where she talked about her experience going through both the grief and shock of her son being caught in the midst of a school shooting, to the utter devastation of finding out he was one of the perpetrators. I had never heard that side of the story, and I was shocked by how little I thought I knew about school shootings without ever delving into the family psychology deeply tied to the creation of a perpetrator.
When making this film, I didn't want to showcase the violence. There is too much of it out there already. I didn't want to make a film about the spectacle of murder, but rather a narrative about a mother's inner psychological state and troubled relationship with addiction that created the conditions for her son to become a monster. I felt this was a more tactful angle to take at the issue and one that hadn't been explored.
THE FRAMES
Below are the hand-drawn frames sketched by my storyboard artist, Fanny Vicencio, under the direction I gave her. From script to storyboard and visual board to finished film, there were a lot of changes that happened. Due to our low budget, most of the film is set in one location - Faith's House - which also serves as a clear picture into her psyche, filled with images of her dead husband and happier times with her baby boy. At first, I felt the need to make it obvious that Faith's son was the school shooter by having a moment of exposition at the end - but in the final cut, I decided against it as it felt too obvious for the big reveal. The reveal should already be made evident by the clever use of props and the beyond amazing acting of our lead - Janice Fisher. It gives this idea of "the monster was always hiding in plain sight, you just never saw him," which really reflects how her addiction played into Faith blocking out reality.
A CLEAR VISION
After developing the storyboard, I put together a video board to give my camera crew and production team the clearest image of what I wanted. Using the contrast chart above, I also helped to paint a clear picture for them of how the use of color would manifest as the film progressed, becoming more intense and warm to reflect themes of violence, whilst the latter half was more focued on cool colors to reflect Faith's underlying depression.
I casted my mom as the sole actress for this visual treatment, and I still feel she did a great job. This also made it more personal and emotional for me, and it gave me a clearer idea of what thoughts and emotions to convey to our lead actress once she was casted for the role.
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!
After a grueling few months of pre-production work location scouting, casting, budgeting, and planning. me and my crew were ready to roll. Our setting ended up being a three-bedroom house in a suburban neighborhood owned by a family member of one of our producers. I loved this location because I felt it was the perfect representation of the 'perfect American household' that is both familiar and uncanny.
We shot our main picture in two days, with a short day for pick-up shots outside. The experience was difficult, but unbelievably gratifying. My team took care of all the technical aspects, while I was allowed to sit with the actress and guide her emotions to give the most powerful performance possible.
THE TITLE SEQUENCE
I didn't want the title sequence to just convey the main credits - I wanted the titles to move the story. The notebook that we see throughout the sequence is in fact Danny, Faith's son's collection of ramblings and manifesto that he writes before going on a rampage. When doing my research, I found that this was a common part of many school-shooter's actions before perpetrating their horrific acts. The other part that I found disturbing is how many of these perpetrators viewed themselves as 'vigilantes' bringing about some form of twisted justice against those who harmed them their whole life. I included other memorabilia in the sequence, such as Danny's nerf gun bullets and Faith's pills - in a way both are synonymous toys; figments of distraction and entertainment to both mother and son that lead them to their ultimate demise.
This sequence was animated and cut together by both myself and the talented Fernando Yanes. The final card shown here still contains the original title to the film.
CREATING MEMORABILIA
I created & photographed all the props seen on the main title sequence myself, as I felt it was the culmination of all the research I had done into the subject up until that moment. I bought a cheap, five dollar notebook, and put myself in the mind of Danny and begun to frantically write a series of madman ramblings. I did not like this process; it was very dark but it made the film feel all the more real.
I really liked the title sequence for Se7en and I wanted to mimic that feel in its scrappiness and color tone. When the assets had been made, I grabbed my cannon camera and took a bunch of pictures under cool, sickly green lighting and lowered the opacity to give it all a tetric feel. I also bought a few gun magazines, nerf bullets, and fake pills to represent the physical space our characters were trapped by.
THE NEWSCAST
I wanted every element of the film to be tailor made to the narrative, and the local news segment was an essential part of that. We also couldn't simply grab an excerpt of CNN's nightly news due to copyright reasons, so I grabbed my graphic design experience at the time and created a very basic lower-thirds set up. I then had a separate film shoot with actor Chris Bass, who really portrayed a convincing news anchor. We set him up on a sound stage in front of a green screen and then did the final composition of his news segment on After Effects with the help of my friend & motion designer, Zach Herdman.
TRAILERS
With the film on track to be finished, we had to put out a trailer to advertise ourselves. It's quite hard to make a trailer for a 5-minute short without giving away too much, and we had to make two. The first one was a shot I had originally thought as the first shot for the film - a sort of dream sequence where pills fell down like bullets onto the floor. This ended up being scrapped in the final cut as it didn't flow nicely, so we ended up using the shot for the shorter teaser instead. I still love the idea and feel like I'll use it somewhere else in the future.
WRAP-UP
Myself and the crew were exhausted by the end of this, but deeply satisfied. Our cinematographer, Keon Abbot, and his crew did an unbelievable job with the camera work in this film, and our producers and sound crew were efficient and professional with their work to enable the vision for this film to come to life.
CREDITS
