Time Bomb (2015)
Short Film Series
In 2015 I was in the thick of my undergrad degree at Brock University. Film Studies. It was something I was passionate about from a very young age, and knew that I had to learn more about it as I got older. Though theoretical, my friends and I nonetheless made the most of those days that were primarily spent studying, watching "films" and discussing them in and out of class. Soon after, and such is the case with most creative types, we wanted to make that transition from simply watching and studying films to actually making films.
Time Bomb is special for me simply because it was one of our firsts. Of course, a couple of our courses demanded practical projects that exist somewhere on the internet to this day. But those videos are for another time and place. Time Bomb was the first project that I spearheaded and spent days trying to get right. This was the first project I shot with my trusty T3i camera (a novelty then). It was the first project we gelled on the most, I think, simply because we were all on the same page with its premise. A student, rushing to get his work handed in, finds himself a part of something bigger. It asks him to be more than just himself, and we as undergrad students could relate to that in spades.
At the time we were in an Early Film Theory class, and though I won't bore you with the details and long lists of dense Russian theorists, I will say that in early cinema silence was the name of the game. There is no dialogue here. To this day we struggle with it as amateur filmmakers. There are little-to-no sound effects either, just the tracks we downloaded (royalty free!) from the internet. So how do you tell a story without dialogue? That's what we were aiming to find out. We modeled this project off of some of our favourite silent film stars - Charlie Chaplin, of course, but most importantly, Buster Keaton. We gravitated towards him because there was something more epic and tragic about his demeanor. He leaped off of trains. He stopped bandits. And he got the girl.
But all of it was with a whimsy that we all loved and appreciated. It was something we wanted to model here. It was something we wanted to pay homage to and announce our love of film.
Looking back on it now (it's only been four years, but it seems like a decade has passed since we accomplished probably one of my favourite shots we've managed to film so far!), I can't help but smile at it's earnestness. It's eager effort to try and impress. It's deployment of various film tricks (close-ups of clocks to show time passing! Panning cameras to enhance the movement and energy!), still puts a smile on my face because I remember the passion we felt experimenting with our new cameras. It was a time when everything seemed possible.
I hope you enjoy it.
Cory Maddalena
In 2015 I was in the thick of my undergrad degree at Brock University. Film Studies. It was something I was passionate about from a very young age, and knew that I had to learn more about it as I got older. Though theoretical, my friends and I nonetheless made the most of those days that were primarily spent studying, watching "films" and discussing them in and out of class. Soon after, and such is the case with most creative types, we wanted to make that transition from simply watching and studying films to actually making films.
Time Bomb is special for me simply because it was one of our firsts. Of course, a couple of our courses demanded practical projects that exist somewhere on the internet to this day. But those videos are for another time and place. Time Bomb was the first project that I spearheaded and spent days trying to get right. This was the first project I shot with my trusty T3i camera (a novelty then). It was the first project we gelled on the most, I think, simply because we were all on the same page with its premise. A student, rushing to get his work handed in, finds himself a part of something bigger. It asks him to be more than just himself, and we as undergrad students could relate to that in spades.
At the time we were in an Early Film Theory class, and though I won't bore you with the details and long lists of dense Russian theorists, I will say that in early cinema silence was the name of the game. There is no dialogue here. To this day we struggle with it as amateur filmmakers. There are little-to-no sound effects either, just the tracks we downloaded (royalty free!) from the internet. So how do you tell a story without dialogue? That's what we were aiming to find out. We modeled this project off of some of our favourite silent film stars - Charlie Chaplin, of course, but most importantly, Buster Keaton. We gravitated towards him because there was something more epic and tragic about his demeanor. He leaped off of trains. He stopped bandits. And he got the girl.
But all of it was with a whimsy that we all loved and appreciated. It was something we wanted to model here. It was something we wanted to pay homage to and announce our love of film.
Looking back on it now (it's only been four years, but it seems like a decade has passed since we accomplished probably one of my favourite shots we've managed to film so far!), I can't help but smile at it's earnestness. It's eager effort to try and impress. It's deployment of various film tricks (close-ups of clocks to show time passing! Panning cameras to enhance the movement and energy!), still puts a smile on my face because I remember the passion we felt experimenting with our new cameras. It was a time when everything seemed possible.
I hope you enjoy it.
Cory Maddalena
Time Bomb (2015)
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