Project Components

Final Film

CIRCUS MONKEY FILM

Postcard

POSTCARD

Social Media

INSTAGRAM

CR

The short film Circus Monkey is a character led dark drama, that depicts the dangers of oversharing on social media, and the fragility of earning validation through it. Our film follows Diego, our protagonist, who after experiencing rejection, seeks attention from a social media following, and resorts to shock to garner it. Additionally, our character experiences weird sexual thoughts, which instead of processing and working through, he exposes and exploits. With our film we wanted to delve into a subculture of men, incel culture, and depict the dangers of extreme misogyny, and social ineptitude that many young men don't notice, or acknowledge the negative impacts of. 

In the writing process of this short, we were inspired greatly by other productions that dealt with the fragility of men, and the dangers of rejection both from women, and society as a whole. One of the biggest productions we took inspiration from was Spree directed by Eugene Kotlyarenko. The film stars' Joe Keery playing a socially inept guy, who tries to gain online fame by being extremely

obnoxious...oh and also killing people. I utilized this film as a major inspiration because of the protagonist's intentions, in addition to the way the film utilizes a hybrid of aspect ratios to depict this social media obsession. Although the film is filmed like a traditional movie, it will occasionally cut to vertical shots, with overlay showing that it is an Instagram live. I loved the way Kotlyarenko utilized this new medium, and how he used it to provide the audience with exposition, hence why we decided to use it in our film. 

Another huge inspiration was the film The Social Network by David Fincher. This film was written by one of my favorite screenwriters. Aaron Sorkin, and thus I took great inspiration from the script itself when it came to writing our film. One of the first scenes of the film involve Mark Zuckerberg being broken up with by his girlfriend, who tells Mark the reason she is breaking up with him is not because he is a nerd, but because he is an asshole. I always loved this scene, and always thought that, in a way, it catalyzed everything that happens in the film. In our film, the confrontation between Ericka and Diego is meant to have the same impact as that scene. In our case, however, we used the scene to close the film, and to establish that the film was in a way, a prequel to whatever horrors he may commit in the future, so in a way, it does happen in the beginning. Not of the film, but of another story. 

Additionally, I did research on many infamous incels. Amongst them, was Christian Chandler. Chris became popular in the early 2000s over the cringey, and embarrassing videos he would post online, and over his desperate attempts to get a girlfriend. Due to his autism, Chris was not very socially aware, which ruthless trolls abused, and his story serves as a warning story for the dangers of social media. I also took inspiration from his mother, who infamously was too old to realize what was happening, and did not protect Chris. In our story, the mother scene serves to show that Diego grew up with a weak feminine figure, who manipulated him and did not support him, and thus why he is the way he is. Elliot Rodgers is another online incel who we used as inspiration. He made a video from his car, talking about how he hated people and will commit a tragedy, which we used as direct inspiration for the very last scene in the film. 

Our product creates a general sense of branding by utilizing the monkey as an icon. My brother Joaquin, who loves to doodle, doodled us a cute picture of a monkey, which we used in our social media as the profile picture, and in the back of our post-card, making it into our logo almost. Additionally, the film is throughout blue, and we follow this in our social media, and in our post-card, giving it the same depressing and dark look, without it being goofy. We additionally created tiktoks in order to promote the film, and a twitter for the protagonist, both which we used in the film, and thus, furthered the existence of the character beyond the screen, allowing the narrative to continue in real life, and matching to the simple, character focused, and realistic look.

Our target audience is young adults, 15-25. I think our intended audience is men. I would love for this to be a preventative film, for someone in the same situation to watch, and feel embarrassed, or worried, and change from it. But realistically, mostly people who care about character studies will watch this. Regardless, I think young film fans will enjoy our film, which is why we probably would distribute it around student film festivals, like nffty, and All American.

I think we were not very successful in keeping the pacing as slow as I wanted it to be, but I think that’s ok. Although we dramatized it a lot, with music and montages, the film still creates a representation of an isolated, depressed, and socially inept guy. The use of risers throughout, help clarify the points were the character feels like he is going to feel a great amount of stress, or has a deep realization.



Clara, Martina and I all put a huge amount of effort and passion, and overall, are very proud of the fact that we decided to do a film that is more based on story, rather than aesthetics. Diego has become an incredibly big part of our lives lately and although I am excited to publish this film, I’m sad that the process is over. I have never had the chance to work on something this big and long, and I am excited to use the knowledge I learned, and garner it for the future.

Equipment

Hey blog, 

Let's talk gizmos and gadgets. 

The equipment we used was rented from Becon TV, the district's news station which rents out equipment to students.

For this short, I wanted to take out absolutely every type of equipment we might need. I did not want to risk audio, or not having the right lense. This is what we took out and how we used it. 

Sony a7- 

I have used this camera before only for films and special videos, because it is a more complicated camera for me to use, but it does look really good, and much better than Canons. So I decided to use it this time. 

Additionally, we used a cage, with add ons like a wheel for focus and handle bars to do the handheld shots we wanted. 

We also had a RGB light kit, that we used to create the blue light in the room. 

We used a boom mic, boom pole, and adaptor, so the boom could be connected to the camera, and we wouldnt stumble with the xlr. It made the filming process much easier. 

Filming Day 1

 Hey blog, 

Let's look at some filming, 

The first day of filming was a bit of a mess. Clara was out of town for a college orientation, and we did not count with the help of our dear friend, Lauren, so, it was up to me to film :(

I hate filming. Not only am I bad at setting up shots and lighting them, I get so extremely overwhelmed, and I struggle to piece together the film by shots. Normally, I have Ren, and when we film I focus fully on directing the acting, and the mise-en-scene, but NEVER the shots. So, I had to try my best. 

The lighting was an issue- since the room we were filming in was so small, there was little room for depth, and thus everything looked kind of flat. I was getting very frustrated filming because our tripod was very weak (I will make a blog post around our issues with equipment), but I was also getting frustrated because the time I was using up setting up each shot, was time I should have been directing Jack's acting, and I was not focusing on him at all, which made the performances lack a bit of tact. Like, although Jack was embodying the emotions, they weren't being specific enough. 

Watching back the footage, I actually liked a lot of it. I think I did fine with the lighting, and managed to get some interesting shots. However, I did wish I could have focused on the acting because that was lacking. 

We managed to film a very small amount of footage from act 1, filming the mom scene, the porn montage, and some shots at the beginning, but not really getting into the thick of it. 

At the end, we had to refilm a lot of it. It is vey hard to do this on my own, and Martina let me take complete control, which although I understand, was really stressfull, since I did not have anyone to confirm that my shots where good, and didn't feel out of place, which made me overthink. 

Luckily, the footage turned out all right and Clara came back, so I didn't have to film alone anymore!

To take advantage of how little we could film, due to time, we decided to record the tiktoks that will go in the film. This was much more fun, since they were filmed on a vertical phone, and I could focus on the performace(which Jack slayed.)

Social Media

Hey blog, 

Let's talk social media, 

Our short has themes that surround social media. The whole thing is a big PSA about the dangers of becoming too comfortable on social media, and the consequences that socially inept people suffer on these platforms. Thus, it is extremely ironic that we had to support our film with social media. 

I knew I wanted to find a creative way of making the social media, play with the fact that Diego's social media is awkward and weird. 

I took inspiration from the marketing used for the movie "Spree."  The marketing team created a Tiktok, twitter and Instagram accounts for the protagonist of the film, where he would post the same content we see him make in the film. Not only does this make people excited to watch the film, but it creates more depth to the character, and gives the impression that this character lives a life outside of the film, and that they are a normal person. 

Chris Lilley, an Australian comedian known for character comedy, also creates social media accounts for his characters when it makes sense for the character. This expands the lore of the character without necessarily having to go through the whole production process and create more episodes. It is also much more casual than the shows he makes, and makes the character feel extremely real, which is hilarious considering all characters, even the ladies, are played by Chris himself.

So I knew that I wanted to incorporate Diego himself into the social media. 

We started by creating an Instagram, well Clara did. After posting a title graphic to reveal the title, we were a little stuck since we had to come up with ideas on how to promote the film, without having filmed yet. 

On our first day of filming, I had an idea. I thought it could be both cool, and smart, to make some "template" tiktoks. That being,  Tiktoks I will use on the montage of the film, in addition to using them as marketing, and to create a brand based on tiktoks. 

Additionally, we made a twitter,  @Diegofuego, a twitter that belongs to our protagonist. Twitter is not just based on what you post, but also what you interact with. 

We made a twitter for our protagonist. Martina takes care of the twitter, and retweets posts that Diego would, like sexual innuendos, video game and computer related posts, and memes. This helps us extend his persona outside of the film. 

Additionally, we are using this twitter in the film as well, so I think it fits nicely. 

As for tiktok, I could not imagine having to keep up a marketing account for the character. I think after we edit all of the tiktoks, we mmight make a tiktok account and post them, but it is unlinkely the account will reach traction, so we're using instagram and twitter.