Project: The Story of a Relationship and My Infatuation with Homosexuality

The Idea

For someone who is often very open about what she does, I think it was noticeable this week when I chose worked on my film clandestinely. A number of you were quite confused when you saw Matt dressed as a psychologist, flipping through pictures of nearly nude men and women.

I decided not to write about my project because I somehow felt like if I explained it, I wouldn't be able to do it. The movie covered a number of serious topics. I feared if people knew what I was doing, they would shame me and tell me no. That is why I have waited until now.

I will start from the beginning.

I have a friend who is a very conservative Catholic. He is basically a self-made theologian. Though I generally disregard those who believe in religious dogma, he made an impression on me by having the ability to logically explain the conservative point of view. Often we do not agree, but he respects my opinions and I respect his.

One day this friend of mine engaged me in a debate about homosexuality. He claims that homosexuals are diseased people suffering from a pathological disorder. He believes this "disorder" can be cured with proper psychological treatment, and that such a cure would benefit the homosexual. Of course I thought this was preposterous, but instead of writing him off, I wanted to hear how he could come to such a conclusion. He had read a book by the Dutch psychiatrist G. J. M. van den Aardweg, explaining the process of how this psychiatrist cured homosexuality in his patients.

This friend of mine is an incredibly good debater, and though I tried my best to refute his points, I could not. Still, I knew my belief was right and his was wrong. Most people would give up, saying that it's not worth arguing with a crazy person. But not me. I love to debate. I love to win. I wasn't done yet.

Last week I had to look up logical fallacies in my English class. I discovered that my friend's argument suffered from an appeal to authority, and I told him right away. He responded, "At least I have evidence. You haven't given me any factual information."

He had valid point. I couldn't argue my point because I didn't have enough information. "Fine," I said. "I will do my research, and then we shall resume this debate."

I pulled out my kindle and searched "homosexuality." A majority of the books had titles like "A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality" or "Leaving Homosexuality: A Practical Guide for Men and Women Looking for a Way Out." This mildly disgusted me, although I probably would have gotten better results if I searched the word "gay." Magically though, I came upon an excellent book on the subject, Understanding Homosexuality: The Pride and the Prejudice by Roger E. Biery. This amazing book explained all of the logical ways in which my friend was wrong. I read it in between classes, on car rides, and late at night. I was infatuated with it.

I returned to my friend and refuted a number of his points, and I'm pretty sure I gained the upper hand. We debated some more until he gave up on rhetoric and decided he would send me the book he read, which will apparently "blow me away." This book is in Spanish and my friend is painstakingly translating parts of it for me to read. He has yet to send it to me. I am waiting.

Now that you have context, I can talk about how I ended up making the movie that I made. On Monday, Luke sent us this assignment.

"You are to tell the story of a couple, from first meeting to break-up, in a series of shots overlaid with music. "

I had two ideas. One involved the story of a girl who falls in love with a boy in a library, but he pays more attention to his books than her. She tries to get his attention, which throws him into a fit of rage, and he breaks up with her.

The other was to make a story about a lesbian insecure about her sexuality who falls in love with a girl. She brings the girl to meet her family, but they don't approve and they send her into reparative therapy, changing her as a human being.

The second idea had a stronger pull on me, but I wasn't sure if it would be appropriate for me to make a movie about lesbians. I felt like I had no authority on the subject because I am not gay. After some pondering, I realized that it would be judgmental for me NOT to make a story about a gay couple. Why does every love story have to be straight? This is a standard perpetuated by our society. It is a social construct. Gay people make movies about straight love. Why can't straight people make movies about gay love? My book defines homosexuality as "the consistent, predominant or exclusive, emotional and erotic attraction to persons of the same gender." There are only two differences between gay and straight couples. The first is that they cannot have children. The second is that they have to deal with prejudice. There are no other differences.

I may not know what is it like to be judged for being gay, but I have been judged, and I did my research on sexuality, so I figured I had sufficient authority on the subject to attempt a film.

Writing

These are my notes on the plot

This is what the notes say. I named the first girl "Insecure" because she is insecure. The other girl is labeled as "Strong" because she is confident.

"An insecure girl walks through hallways seeing women. She is confused and visibly unsettled.

She sits in a secluded area reading books on sexuality. A friendly girl approaches her. They talk, look at each other. Strong girl puts her hand on insecure girl's hand. They smile.

They meet in a number of locations secretly. Insecure girl is somewhat reluctant. Strong girl holds her.

Insecure girl does more research, harsh news paper headlines.

Insecure introduces Strong to suspicious parents. They eat dinner. Parents see them holding hangs. Father storms out. Mother cries

Insecure is taken to therapist. She has episodes of mild self-harm.

Two girls are in the same place as the beginning. Strong goes up to insecure. She looks goth, depressed. Insecure shoves Strong and walks away, dropping book. Strong picks it up. She cries."

Storyboarding

I immediately drew out a storyboard. The movie was so vivid in my mind I was able to convert it to storyboard format very easily. The plot did end up changing a good amount in the drafting process. (Note: many of the storyboards are marked up because I checked them off as I went)

I drew out the first scene but crossed it out because it seemed unnecessary.

I also cut out the section where she reads newspapers because it would be difficult to acquire a newspaper with a desired title, and it seemed unnecessary anyway.

This is the draft of when they meet.

I later cut a number of the shots.

For their love montage, I honestly did not plan much. I figured I could accomplish it spontaneously.

This was the plan for dinner with the parents.

The therapy montage was also not as fleshed out. At the time I had trouble thinking of examples of therapy. I knew that electrocution was used, so I drew that. I ended up removing it, because I thought it would be too violent, and it would distract from the film.

This was the break up.

Filming

I knew immediately I wanted Emily in my film as the insecure girl. Not because I think she's insecure. I thought she had the sensitivity needed for the role. Also, she's a beautiful girl and she should be in more films. As for the other girl, I saw Danielle walking through the hallway and I thought she would be great for the role of a strong lesbian. Again, not because I think she's a lesbian.

Meet up/Break up

The first day, we filmed the meet up and the break up, since many of them contained the same shots. I made a chart to parallel the two scenes.

I cut out a few shots, but I was generally consistent to the storyboard.

In a number of ways, the filming went better than I expected. I told Danielle she had to try and get Danielle's attention, and I wasn't expecting her to try this.

The actors did a good job changing so quickly between drastic emotions. I'm sure was a difficult task.

Love Montage

I finished filming the meet up/break up quicker than I expected, so I ended up filming the montage on the same day. We all thought on our feet, brainstorming ways couples have fun together. Emily and Danielle had a snowball fight, played hide and seek, spun in a circle, and made a snowman.

Filming the spinning was particularly fun. I handed the camera to each of the girls and they filmed themselves spinning in a circle. It looked ridiculous on the outside, but great on film.

The snow man segment was cut, but everything else was saved.

Therapy

For this section I did some extra research, especially since I knew that I couldn't use electrocution therapy in my film. I found two kinds of therapy that I could depict non-verbally.

The first was Behavioral Modification. This involves showing pictures of men and women, and punishing the patient when they react in an "undesired way."

The second was Reparative Therapy. The patient is shown pictures of "masculine" or "feminine" things, in hopes that they will begin to act more like their gender.

In the end, I decided that the therapist would impose his authority by whacking Emily's hand with a ruler. This seemed sufficiently painful without being overly violent.

I had Luke print out the images I wanted to use because my home printer has terrible quality. Matt was my therapist.

Matt certainly had a way with words. He said many terrifying things to Emily as he went through the pictures. We ended up making her cry by the end. I view that as a success.

Meeting the Parents

I made some extra notes for how I would film this, because I didn't want to waste time. Emily and John had to get back to the school for music.

I ended up disregarding most of these notes, because the first storyboard I made had planned the scene enough so I could improvise in between.

John and Kat were Emily's parents. They did an excellent job. 

Editing

Once I got all the footage, I worked swiftly on editing. The song I picked for is You Showed Me by The Turtles. This song sticks out to me because it sounds so sad, even though it's a positive song.

During editing I learned something important. The more raw footage you have, the more difficult editing becomes. In the scenes that I plotted out shot by shot, editing was a simple task. However, the scenes I let the camera run on left me a lot of work for later. The meet up and break up took me a period or two to edit. The therapy segment took me up until now.

Especially for the therapy segment, editing was more difficult than I thought. Although I had shot most of the movie, I crafted that scene, if that makes any sense.

There are a few continuity errors, and there were people in the background of some scenes. Hopefully, these aren't very noticeable.

The Movie

Here it is.

Bibliography

Biery, Roger E. Understanding Homosexuality: The Pride and the Prejudice. Austin: Edward-William, 2010. Print.