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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.