BRUTAS MIGHTY APE

 

To conform is to be a man. Follow your testosterone as your guide. Rise until you are fulfilled. Let all those who follow perish. rise to the top of the food chain. forever be the alpha-male. Long live Brutas.

 

This project was for the Film Production unit of my Media Studies - Diploma (Level 3) course that focuses on the exaggeration of masculinity in adolescents as a cloaked underground cult chooses Brann as an ape messiah that turns him into the ultimate alpha male. Joseph can't help but want for attention from his friend Brann, no matter how extreme his mental condition is; Joseph still chases him down the dark path. This film was created much in the same vein of I Hate Celine Dion and CUCKOO FOR CACA as the imagery and concept are absurd but presented with a core message and dark tension. The film was edited, colour corrected and sound mixed on Premiere Pro.

 

Filming for this project took place across multiple days and at most had a crew of 2 people. As members of the cast cancelled on the day of the shoot, I decided that I could direct the action from in front of the camera and fill the roles of two characters in one shot. Though much of this effect was achieved through masking techniques during the editing process, the attention to costume was key as each character had to be recognizable by their costume alone in order for audiences to believe it was the same character. The scenes that utilized this masking technique was the final church scenes as Joseph chases Brann into the woods.

 

The editing process was by far the most ambitious I've attempted in terms of visual effects. Taking what I learnt on projects like CUKOO FOR CACA I wanted more scenes of 'digital effects' and 'masking clone' techniques. This is seen mostly in the opening scene of the cult gathering where much of the set was crafted within Premiere Pro through taking separate clips of lights and concrete walls to dress the set (The other digital set being the opening Living room and the mirrored door hallway). The members of the cult were once again all the same actor placed into the same scene through masking effect (an effect that is also seen in later scenes such as 'Looking through the Window' and 'Running past the Living Room'). 

The film's soundtrack was comprised of remixed instead of flowers demos to create the industrial noise tracks seen in the film that is essential in setting the uneasy tone.

 

This project was the most draining I've worked on due to multiple program crashes and lost files, as well as the amount of tedious frame by frame masking that was necessary for certain shots. Ultimately I think the final product was effective and an accurate representation of the original concept.

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The script for the film can be viewed here

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This film was re-purposed as a music video: here it is.