From the set of Out of Focus

The study’s case statement asks: “What might the future look like for both men and women given the full inclusion of a generation or two of truly empowered female perspectives in our media ecology?”^[1] The study authors go on to comment that research indicates that a filmmaker’s gender does influence what story is told. Women tend to focus on the stories of women as well as that of the human condition. Furthermore, another study cited within the Annenberg research shows that women who direct or produce a film are less likely to employ blood, gore and the use of weapons as a cinematic plot device. This finding is supported by our own Three Horizons Productions‘ embrace of the supernatural thriller, such as Out of Focus, which tends to avoid the slasher film techniques of other thriller and horror subgenres. Women filmmakers tend to focus more on thought-provoking story narrative to drive the plot.

As anyone in the arts or entertainment industries can attest, digital media has become increasingly integrated into filmmaking, design, gaming and more. The University of Washington has an exciting program through its Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS). Andrew Theisen recently earned an undergraduate degree from the program. Because of the interdisciplinary aspect of filmmaking, Three Horizons Productions (THP) wanted to speak with these young digital artists in order to gain perspective on the unique blend of technology, art and sensory experience.

Out Of Focus – Supernatural Thriller

You did some work on THP’s Out of Focus.

I rendered some of the opening title sequence and did some lighting for it. It was early in my digital media career. I learned a lot working with very large files. I learned the importance of organizing your projects. I did some camera work in 3D.

Did you have any challenges?

I had a fair amount of technical challenges since the texture files were so large. What I had to output was so large that I had to build a render farm. I had to set up the system to support the files.

What equipment did you use?

I went to used PC shops for cheap machines to build a small render farm. You don’t need the most powerful machines, just a lot of them. You sync them up and set up a local network so it speeds up the resolution file. It got me started into the open source world more. I used Maya. I installed Linux on those machines and used open source programs like DrQueue to manage render jobs.

How did you overcome any challenges on the Out of Focus project?

When a problem arises, I just want to solve it and knock down the obstacle.

What are some of your own projects?

I worked on two student animated short films and an interactive art piece using a game engine with real-time sound synthesis/processing. I’m currently creating a realistic 3D face for research at UW.

To better understand the possibilities of the interconnectivity of digital media, I recommend viewing Mr. Theisen’s sublime senior project, “These Spaces We Form”.

I found your project, “These Spaces We Form,” fascinating. Is it intended to be a user-interactive game environment?

Yes. It was presented in a gallery setting. It’s meant to be an interactive work. You use a Wacom tablet to navigate and draw the gestures. You wear headphones and both see and hear while you’re forming the experience as you’re progressing.

When I was watching the video, the canvas reminded me of that opening scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Where did you get the inspiration for it?

I was walking around my city – I’ve always had this desire to manipulate my environment and my experience. One thing I tried to translate into the experience itself was the interaction with previous users’ gestures as well. In more recent versions, which I don’t have videos of, more clearly show that. When you walk around a man-made environment, there are a bunch of different peoples’ interactions and experiences that you can play in your own mind in a solitary moment. You also have the experiences you bring to the places where you are that make it unique – it’s not just the people who build it but the events and the emotional cloud that builds up. I think there’s that detail we all pick up from all around. We may not be able to pinpoint it, but there is something that is happening.

So you’re saying the design builds upon the experience of each user?

Yes. It stores up to three previous users as well as yourself. I started reading about this philosophical/psychological concept called intersubjectivity. A basic example would be like an inside joke, a shared meaning between people. Everyone has their own definition of things, but there is this shared space. Another example would be how commonsense is agreed upon. We all have our different meanings or definitions of certain words, but then there is a meeting place where we can understand each other. I’m trying to explore that meeting place.

It sounds like a synchronicity sort of experience. Are you going to continue to move the project forward, perhaps to market it?

I want to keep iterating on it. I want to make a more complex environment, yet I want to keep the environment simple because the experience should come from the users. I want the blank canvas feel at first. I want it to seem like it is pretty empty because you bring something to it and other people bring something to it as well as I, as an artist, bringing something to it. It was presented in a gallery setting twice. I actually think that is a weakness of it. One thing I have noticed is that people are very apprehensive about interactive work in those settings. It’s hard to get people to start from the beginning and get to the end. People would stop in the middle and then others would pick up in the middle and be confused because they miss out on the beginning piece which teaches you a bit about the environment. It’s my first interactive system, so I’m learning a lot about how people play with it. One idea is to release it online for people to use in the comfort of home like reading a book or playing a video game.

It seems like something that would be great online, for people to play with their friends. Friends in different cities could play and see where it goes. In my experience, things that are interactive seem to do a lot better with kids. Have you seen any kids interact with the project?

Actually, yes! Interesting you bring that up. The first time I showed it, a few kids came up to play with it while their parents watched. The kids would actually play from the beginning to the end. People would say, “How did you get there?” And the kids would say, “Well, I just kept going.” Another thing I noticed is that people, who play video games and other interactive systems, rarely got to the end. Non-gamers more often got to the end.  In games these days, there is an explicit drive on how to move forward, so I guess when they don’t have that they get lost. I need to be able to reach a middle ground so both groups can enjoy it. That’s something that’s very important to me. I don’t want anyone to have to have any sort of gaming knowledge to enjoy this interactive system.

I like how you chose to use binaural sound for the experience.

It’s supposed to be a very immersive space. The first time I showed it, for my senior thesis show, I used a cubicle desk, so that the user could be partitioned from the physical space. You basically would have the sound and the video in front of you. I’m interested in immersive spaces, universal spaces, that aren’t exactly where you are. Sound, I think, is one of the most important parts of that, especially if you have good sound localization. I still feel like I have a lot of work to do with that, but using binaural sound  along with filters  to mimic distance from a sound source, for example, as well as smearing the frequency spectrum as you get farther away. So if you get closer to a plane, the detail of that plane is more prominent. Something I would want to do for the future is that you could hear gestures more prominently as you got closer to each plane.  For example, if you drew some really quick gestures on one, you would get very rhythmic sound or a flowing sound on a different plane. In the center of these planes, you hear all of them wash together, so you hear  the space differently. Another thing is the proximity to each plane. It will kind of shift the experience of space.

It’s fascinating to bring that sensory and physical interaction with digital media together. Tell me about the DXARTS program you went through at the University of Washington.

Page from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

I had a great opportunity to take that degree. Unfortunately, it will no longer be offered as an undergraduate major for the time being. They are keeping the undergraduate classes and the graduate program. Their philosophy is that the arts are always an experimental process. They are really interested in that concept in the sciences as well. A great piece of art must change something in the culture like science does, such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. In the arts, for example, you have Beethoven who, in the beginning of the Ninth Symphony, alluded to what he would do in the final movement. You see a lot of people doing that now with electronic music, which is more on a timbral spectrum but is very familiar in form. The argument is, as an artist, you always want to be experimental, to explore something and use media to do that. It doesn’t have to be a digital medium, but it has so much potential these days. It’s grown so much in the last 40 years. I think we’ll really start to see some interesting things happening in this century as we become more familiar with how the digital world works and bridging it with the analog world. A lot of artists there (DXARTS) try to create an analog sculpture that is controlled by some digital thing. So there is this meeting space that happens.

They are keeping the major classes around. For instance, how I got all of the sound work done was through their sound series where they teach music in a very different way. You’re not learning to compose with a pen and staff paper; you’re writing code. You have to think quite differently. At the same time, we’ll listen to Bach in our classes because everything we do can be traced back to that (the classical masters). They want us to extract that knowledge. Sometimes they stress the technical less because they want us to do that on our own. They do teach us to do it on our own, but they want also to teach us the higher concept of composition and how it’s built on history.

I think we need to bring these  ideas in music and art history to the younger ages. Getting kids involved with digital arts and hands-on learning with interactive environments needs to be explored a lot more. Even game developers like Valve are looking at the way they teach players to use their games and to use those concepts to teach things like motor skills and abstract concepts that might help kids with math.

Interior of Seattle Central Library

I have a 14-year-old son who is very into digital media. He wonders about the prospects for a digital design artist in the coming years. What is your opinion?

The wonderful thing is it is so open. It seems like there are so many worlds you can go into. There’s the entertainment industry, Hollywood, a game company. Microsoft and Google are doing a lot. I’ve seen Microsoft Kinect used more for art projects than games. It was born out of an entertainment concept. The art world is bringing installation art and art into the public setting. For instance, a piece at the Seattle Library keeps track of every single book that’s checked in and checked out and shows on displays those books.

Then there are those in-between spaces where people are pulling from both the entertainment and the art worlds. The digital medium is great for the educational world as well. You can start creating really intuitive systems that rely on a tactile sense. Of course, it’s not easy to do. I really think it has unlimited potential just as the analog world does. It will be interesting to see how they start to meet. They both have their strengths. When they are combined – like when you hear an instrument recorded with a microphone and it’s digitized and processed–, you have a really organic sound that you can never get anywhere else. There is tons of opportunity.

How did you get involved with digital design?

It probably started around when I was 13 or 14. I always played with computers a lot. I started seeing the artistic side of it. When I was a teenager, I approached it as an analog tool. You could make really nice designs and 3D models with it. You could do these elaborate processes that you could never do by hand. You could program and create these dynamic works. This whole world opened up. It was curiosity.

I chose to use the Unreal Development Kit because it does 3D processes in real time. It’s something I’m seeing a lot more. Unity is another program I have not used myself, but I’ve seen a lot of people using it to create tools with it like storyboarding or interactive systems with Kinect, where a dancer is recorded by the Kinect and visual and sound representations are fluid. It’s interesting how we can create these complex connections. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the technical aspect. If we bring in a meaningful structure to it, we can bring in art, education, entertainment.

Another question from my son, who asks, what open source software or tools do you think are great?

If you’re interested in 3D applications, a good one, which is not open source, is Maya. There is also Blender which is completely open source. Unity is not open source but good for learning programming logic. The great thing about learning programming with such tools is that you’ll see the results quickly. For sound, I used SuperCollider. That’s open source and very powerful. You hear what you’re doing right away. Starting early will help with algorithmic thinking so when you go to college you’ll have a leg up.

What direction do you hope your career takes? 

For now, I’d like to work for a company that does something different with the medium. Then, I’d like to return to school and study art further.

What advice would you give a high school student who is interested in digital arts?

Dive into it. Get on the Internet and look up what people are doing. Talk to people who have done this for a while. Motivate yourself to try it out on your own. If you do, you have a head start. Don’t worry about being too conceptual. See what you want to experiment with. Surround yourself with people with similar interests. Keep going down the rabbit hole of curiosity. Don’t be afraid. It might not work right away. Teach yourself how to learn these tools. The tools grow so fast; being able to adapt is healthy. Don’t worry about specializing right away. There are a lot of open source tools out there. And don’t be afraid to break things. You should be breaking things all of the time. If you are breaking things, then you know you are learning something because you won’t want to break it again.

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Three Horizons Productions is a team of independent filmmakers who want to develop, acquire, and produce multi-media projects that showcase inspirational themes, compelling stories, and provocative characters to entertain or educate international audiences. Three Horizons Productions, located in Arizona, has a global outreach.

from the interactive installation “(un)stable” by Gaelen Sayres

Gaelen Sayres graduated from the University of Washington-Seattle’s DXARTS program. He was drawn to the program by his love of science, technology and art. I spoke with Mr. Sayres about his student work, his contribution to Three Horizons Productions’ Out Of Focus and his look toward the future. Emerging artists such as Mr. Sayres benefit from a larger community of talent and mentorship. Independent entities like Three Horizons Productions seek to engage and inspire these young artists.

What made you decide to go into the DXARTS program?

In high school we didn’t really have an arts program. It was a small high school. I used to hate computers mostly because I couldn’t type well. Then, one of my friends introduced me to his digital video camera and it started from there. We started making really short, silly films. It gave me a medium to work in artistically. Before that I did some drawing but wasn’t really talented. But editing and software clicked with me. Senior year, a friend and I were in charge of what was called “Friday videos.” We would show these short videos in school, at lunch time. It had announcements but would also have a music video or something else. We would mess around with the technology and software. My friend went to film school, but I felt like I might want to go into one of the sciences. Then, I saw the DXARTS program online. I saw projects that borrowed from astronomy and film and merged them. It was a good mix of science, technology and art. The moment I started I took all of the prerequisites. Every step of the way confirmed that it was for me.

from ‘The Immortal” by Gaelen Sayres

The interconnectivity of every subject shows that it can be combined. What kind of work are you doing now since graduating?

I am freelancing for special effects and motion graphics. On the side, I’m working in the corporate art world and still working on my own personal endeavors. I’m also looking for jobs that involve motion graphics and effects jobs. Freelancing is great for setting your own hours and such, but it is also stressful because you can’t work for 8 hours and then go home; it’s always present.

How do you go about getting your freelance jobs?

Well, early on, I taught myself to use After Effects. I connected with other people interested in film. I did some work on an experimental ad campaign that a friend was doing. It did really well. Since then, he’s done really well so he keeps coming back to me. I like the whole process.

You also did some work for Three Horizons Production’s Out Of Focus.

The mind-link effect between Aella and the object she touches — the light, magic effect is what I focused on for that film.

What kind of software did you use?

Mind Powers in Out Of Focus Movie

Mainly After Effects, which is the main tool I use. I wanted to do a fluid dynamics type of effect, a smoky effect, but After Effects is not really good for that. You have to go to a 3D program. I did find this great tutorial, in which this guy figured out a way to do great fluid dynamics with After Effects. I tried it out and it worked really well. Brian Maffitt is one of the main After Effects gurus. It was my first time working with Red footage and working with other people on a project.

Would you have changed anything on the project?

I would have liked to have worked with the crew in person. I feel there is a lot to be learned by working with other people. That is why I would like to get a steady job in a studio because of that ability to learn.

I saw your short film “Someplace Beautiful.” Was that for the DXARTS program?

That was the first narrative film course I had ever taken. It was an awesome course and fast paced. We had to storyboard the screenplay and everything. I’ve had the idea for a while. One of the coolest parts of doing something like that in Seattle was making a call for actors and have people come out of the woodwork. People came out who had no reason to help me out with my film other than that they think it would be interesting. I met some people I’d like to work with in the future.

I think it is along the lines of encapsulating a moment, which is hard to do — to keep it simple, brief but heavy with meaning. Tell me about your installation “I Light This Candle In A Transaction.”

It was shown in the DXARTS Media show in Seattle and again in Spokane. The piece is mainly commenting on modern consumer society and how it is affecting spiritual practices as well as in what ways mechanizing the spiritual process can help or distract from the spiritual experience. In this piece, I got the idea from a Catholic votive candle stand. You light a candle and make a prayer for someone else. I was interested in the evolution of the votive candle stand because it is kind of mimicking how our consumer society is changing as well. Now there are electronic votive candle stands in many churches for fire hazard reasons. They still have the donation box, which is unnecessary since they no longer need to defray the cost of candles. But, it seems to me, people have this mindset they must pay for their prayer to be heard.

Like the Medieval concept of indulgences?

Yes.

Did you find people were a little afraid to use it?

“I light this candle in a transaction”

People were a little afraid to use the credit card machine even though I was charging nothing. To me, it is interesting how people will use their card for absolutely everything, but when it comes to a religious transaction people are automatically skeptical. I’d eavesdrop on people in the gallery. People got it. It was all about placing your trust in someone else or in God. The most interesting interaction was friend groups because one person would figure out how to use the piece. They would then get all their friends to try it out. It became a community interaction. If people were alone, they would mainly look at it and then walk away.

Group mentality versus the individual.

The group mentality made it more of a game. The prayer was mechanized to a point that they wanted to keep using it for the novelty value rather than the spiritual value.

Did you have different prayers programmed?

The prayer system was borrowed from a votive prayer site online. On this one site, you can click on a candle that has been lit and read someone else’s prayer or write your own prayer and click to light a candle. I went to that site and copied hundreds of different prayers into a text file. I used a code that can look through text and find patterns: for example, if you fed in Shakespeare, it would print out something very similar to Shakespeare’s writing except it would be completely unique.

So it follows the sentence structure and pattern?

Yes. It looks at language patterns. I applied that to the prayers. So when you swipe your card, it would create a unique prayer based on those patterns.

Did the prayers make sense?

Yes! Some you have to generate meaning. I like the transaction between the computer and a person. It was surprisingly successful. It is what you get out of it.

In your project description, you discuss some inspiration coming from Douglas Adams’s “The Electric Monk.” Adams was an atheist but did have a lot of commentary on spiritual practice and the peccadillos of modern society. I found your piece interesting because it gives the user a “receipt” with a prayer on it. In order to make a prayer; I must make a transaction first.

Another part of the piece I like is that you are participating in a mechanized spiritual process. The viewer can determine whether or not it works. Does it hold spiritual value for them? Can they find meaning in the prayer a computer generates? I like to think about where does meaning come from? Is it generated? Does it come from us? Does the importance of a prayer come from the person making it, or does importance lie in its destination? Wherein lays the importance of a prayer? A prayer is a transaction in a sense, similar to a credit card transaction; you have to trust it’s going to go through and you are going to get what you want. But there is no physical transaction.

It makes me think of your sound composition and its description in which you talk about Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Immortal,” a mix of logic and fantasy. With the votive candle piece, did you construct it yourself?

I would have loved to have used a real votive candle stand, but they are surprisingly expensive. So I decided to build my own. I went off general dimensions. The stand is on a podium. I put a receipt printer and credit card reader into it.

At DXARTS, it’s not just media, but you can physically build something?

Yes! That’s my favorite part of the program. There is a series called Mechatronics. It’s all about bringing the digital world into the real world. They teach you how to use electronics and sensors and how to harness the processing power of the real world. Linking the real world with the computer and processing that back out to make interesting interactive pieces. They teach you how to work with materials as well, so you can build whatever you want.

Tell me about your project “(un)stable.”

We have a summer course before the Mechatronics course. It was my project for that class. The challenge with that one was that it was only a four-week course. I had recently gotten back from Japan, so I wanted to use my experience for that.

To me as a viewer, it is an encapsulation of the moment when you experience an earthquake. That moment when you look down and realize everything is moving.

Right. The tableware and the noise are important because of the clinking and the rattling that the ceramics make. I liked the idea that it would sit in the quiet gallery space; suddenly, you realize something is different. People are walking through the gallery and they hear a tinkling, which gets louder. They look around and see this podium that was once still is shaking and disrupting that normally quiet atmosphere. The dinner table is usually a family-oriented, stable environment. You hope that one of the basic human needs — to eat dinner with your family — will not be disturbed. The piece uses earthquake data from USGS. They get data from all over the world, near real-time analysis. It picks up that and starts rattling within minutes.

So your time in Japan was cut short because of the earthquake. Based on that experience, is that where you came up with the idea for the experimental film “Torii?”

Yes. I came up with the idea for that in Japan, on the day of the Tōhoku quake. A month or two prior to the quake, I had been travelling around Japan to take pictures of mountain shrines and Shinto gates, which are called torii. I really wanted to document them and do something for a piece. Then, in the middle of filming the torii the quake happened. At the end, the conversation between one of my Japanese friends and me actually happened while we were sitting in a disaster relief area of our school. The idea hit me. I was exploring these spiritual gates, the conversation — they seemed a good combination.

What made you want to go to Japan?

I’ve been interested in Japanese art and culture since I was little. I think in 4th grade someone introduced me to origami. Then, I got interested in Japanese calligraphy and landscape painting. I’d try to copy from books from the library. In high school, the only foreign language offered was Spanish, so I found a Japanese tutor and started taking Japanese and became connected to other Japanese programs in Spokane. I went on one of my first exchange programs the summer after my sophomore year. I loved it. I wanted to go back. In college, I minored in Japanese. I was interested in the culture and wanted to study abroad.

Lastly, what advice would you give a current high school or incoming college student who may be interested in digital arts?

Blue prints for “(un)stable” by Gaelen Sayres

I think it depends on what kind of digital arts they are interested in! I think film is a great intro into the world of digital art (which is how I first started experimenting around). Digital video is getting more and more inexpensive by the day as well as increasing in quality and ease of use, making it something viable for younger kids to play with.

Once I got a handle of capturing and editing digital video, I started to want to go further and recreate worlds that I had read about in fantasy and science-fiction. This led me to learning After Effects. It was not really until DXARTS and college that I started to think past entertainment and Hollywood-type narrative film and into more experimental art endeavors.

I was almost completely self-taught in film and FX, and the internet was an invaluable tool to do this. There are tutorials for almost anything online nowadays, so if you want to make a Star Wars or Harry Potter spin-off there will be lots of help to make it a success.

Another direction to go is electronics and I personally wish I was introduced earlier to them. I cannot give too much advice on this front since I am a recent initiate myself, but there are lots of resources for Arduino and Processing that can get almost anyone up and running. There are lots of easy examples and tutorials that can ease you into the more complex projects. I also use Video Copilot.  Also, if you are looking for inspiration, try Motionographer.

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Three Horizons Productions is a team of independent filmmakers who want to develop, acquire, and produce multi-media projects that showcase inspirational themes, compelling stories, and provocative characters to entertain or educate international audiences. Three Horizons Productions, located in Arizona, has a global outreach.

Out Of Focus, Supernatural Thriller

When Three Horizons Productions’ (THP) debut short film, Out Of Focus, premiered in December 2012, I remember several audience members commenting on the font used for the film. In light of a 15-minute version of Out Of Focus’ acceptance to the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival; I interviewed artist Olivia Barratier, who did the key art for the film. While reviewing Ms. Barratier’s work, I was intrigued by the volume, quantity and obvious creative focus of her projects.

Ms. Barratier was born in Paris, France. At the age of 15, she travelled to the United States for the first time as part of a student exchange program. After her baccalauréat, she studied art and design at the Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland. She eventually found her way back to the U.S. and now resides—and constantly creates—in Southern California. She has worked on film posters, visual effects, and other areas of post-production for many films.

Remi Vaughn had you create the key art for Out Of Focus. Tell me a bit about that.

I remember the first encounter with Remi and her energy, which is wonderful. The first conversation we had on the phone – I immediately had a great feeling about working with Remi and becoming collaborators. I did that project the way I normally do all of my posters. I go through the footage of the film, go through the photos and do four or five different maquettes and present them to the director. Then we go from there. With Remi, it was very organic. The most thrilling part is the first moment you have with those images. It’s like sliding into a story and capturing the emotions of the writer or the director. That’s a moment I love. I get to explore different emotions and try to give it an image.

Did you do the fonts for Out Of Focus?

I did. I hand draw fonts. I try to design striking fonts like in An American Haunting. I normally design the main title of the film. For Out Of Focus, I took inspiration from an existing font. I modify it and make it unique for the film.

Out Of Focus Poster

An American Haunting Poster

In your process of creating art for a film, do you take notes or wait to get a certain feeling from the film?

Well, I either get to see the film or the film isn’t yet shot so I just get photos. In the case of when I see the film, I don’t take notes. I try to feel and be touched by one moment in the film. Often in a film, there is one moment that is really where you get goose bumps or it brings you in.  I really think the story and the emotion are most important and I try to capture that.

Art by Olivia Barratier for The General, directed by John Boorman

Could you tell me about your education and training?

I went to art college in Dublin to do my master’s course in visual arts and communication. I started work with John Boorman, the film director. I did a series of posters with him when I was 20 or 21. I was working at the time in a big advertising studio. That’s how I got started doing photo retouch and got into film posters.

What took you to Dublin to study?

I would call it an accident. After graduating from school in France, after the baccalauréat, my girlfriend fell in love with this Irish guy, and we hitchhiked to Dublin two days before I was supposed to go to La Sorbonne where I was going to study history and sociology. So, I kind of got diverted. I went to Dublin and just stayed. I never went back to Paris.

Yellow Cab, New York 1988 by Olivia Barratier

You attended Amherst High School, in Massachusetts, briefly while you were on a school exchange program. At that time, did you decide you wanted to come back to the U.S. and work?

Yes. Absolutely. I was very struck by the United States. I very much had a sense of the freedom, of such an expanse and of a real sensation of something free about the people. Coming from France which is a beautiful place in terms of the architecture and in terms of the landscape, the United States is so different. I was struck by the United States especially while visiting New York. I was 15. The architecture and the amount of sky you could see and the lights really just blew me away.

So you went back to New York first, after Dublin, to work.

I was in Dublin for 10 years: four years at school and then six years working. Then, I went to New York. At the time, I had just completed a course, which takes place in Portland, Oregon. It was an Avid film course. You basically become a certified Avid technician. You spend two months there working with a film director and go to the cutting room and learn the full process of digitizing a film. We worked on a Steenbeck as well as Avid. I was getting more into editing. I had started using the Avid in Dublin to edit music videos and television commercials. I spent three months in Portland and then went to New York and started working for a huge company at the time that was doing music videos for people like Moby, the Roots and hip-hop bands that were in New York. I worked as an editor and edited a feature there. I ended up working for two years in New York.

You’ve done a lot of different types of artwork in addition to the editing.

I’m definitely a visual artist first. In film, I’ve been an assistant director, editor, and have done a lot of aspects in post-production as well as on set. All of these combined are parts of the same thing: visual expressions. I’ve always stayed a visual artist.

Art by Olivia Barratier

Magic Paris By Night by Olivia Barratier

Have you ever been in front of the camera as opposed to behind the camera or in post- production?

I was in front of the camera when I was 5 years old. I starred in a film for Jacques Demy, the film director. My parents met on his film Les demoiselles de Rochefort, which was a film with Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac, and Gene Kelly. My mother [Sarah Hardenberg] was a dancer. My father [Jacques Henri Barratier] was an assistant director. I then acted for Jacques Demy. I think that was my only in front of the camera appearance!

Poster designed by Olivia Barratier for Les Tombales, a short film by Christophe Barratier

You sort of got into the family business of film and the creation process.

My father was a film producer. He produced Costa-Gavras films, which are very political and very successful films, one of them being State of Siege. That is a very important film politically. It is in the family. My brother [Christophe Barratier] was nominated for an Oscar, for his first film. He’s a film director. He’s been doing very well as a film director and also produces films.

Have you been nominated or received any awards for your work?

In the line of work I’ve been doing, movie posters, there are no awards as such, but this year I’ve been awarded as one of Lürzer’s 200 Best Digital Artists in the world. So I’ve been selected as one of them. I also won an award for one of my artworks, through Lürzer’s “Archive,” which is a German-based art magazine. They present the work of the best photographers and best digital campaigns that have been done. They are incredible. I’ve been following them for five years because, to me, they are a reference of what is happening visually in the world. That was a huge honor.

You are a photographer as well.

Yes. I take photos of my artwork. I was trained as a photographer. When I was at university, photography became one of my subjects. I started out working with film, not digital. Then I worked in a studio for six years in advertising and all the photographers used medium-format cameras with up to 10×8 transparencies and shooting huge campaigns like Smirnoff, Coca Cola, and all the car campaigns in Ireland. I worked in a high-end professional photography background. Photography is a huge part of my process. I do landscapes where I retouch the photos and maybe put 40 photos into one landscape. Or if I am using the negatives or the digital image, blend in paint and different media and collage. Photography, I’d say, is 90 percent of my process.

Do you still use negatives?

I do still use negatives.

Bogart’s Tower by Olivia Barratier

Do you find certain attributes to the negatives that are not found in digital image? Do you find that sometimes a certain piece warrants a negative instead of a digital image?

I would have to say that the line between them is getting thinner and thinner. The digital cameras are getting so incredible. The lenses are getting better. For the most part I use digital, but I still use a lot of film. I think what happens is that certain media has a magic quality to it and a dimension to it that you don’t get with digital. With digital, you get exactly what you see. What you shoot is what you’re going to get. With film, there is always an element of surprise and something in the texture. I do think it is irreplaceable in terms of that magical quality that you still don’t get with digital. I find that the immediacy of the digital process prevents you from taking a step back. I tend to wait before I look at what I’ve shot because I think there is something about waiting to look at what you’ve shot.

So negative film adds a certain dimension or atmosphere you don’t necessarily get with digital? I can see with digital how easy it is to look and scrap right away what you don’t like without really looking at the image.

Exactly. I think with certain errors, what we think won’t work, there is something wonderful that we may disregard too quickly.

Art by Olivia Barratier

When you work digitally, do you use certain go-to programs to work with your images?

I’ve been working with Photoshop for 20 years now. I feel Photoshop is like second nature. I’m used to processing my images through it. I don’t use pre-formatted effects. I counterbalance my images and, if I’m doing a superimposition of images or layers, I do it in Photoshop.

What projects are you currently working on?

At the moment, I am preparing for Paris Photo LA at the end of April. We have twenty pieces that are being printed and mounted at the moment. Most of them are 20×30 and we’ll have a few bigger pieces. I am also getting my Diaries printed for that.

I would like to know more about your Diaries series.

I’ve always kept diaries. I think they are an interesting record of bits and pieces of everyday life. They create an image of the mood or the moment. In this case, it is a visual record. I have found a really interesting process to get them printed. It is a process I’ve developed. They’re going to be printed on this very beautiful paper. Once I do this, I’ll have a place on my website that will show how they look mounted. I also have an exhibition taking place at Barnsdall, which was Frank Lloyd Wright’s house.

What is it like to go back over those moments after some time?

It’s incredible. I have to say what is extraordinary is that they are so emotional. There is no holding back in them. There’s no facade and no hiding. They’re not construed. They are just pure. So when I look at them, I remember the exact moments with no barrier. I find that really incredible because they’re like my stepping stones of my life.

What would you tell a young artist just starting out?

by Olivia Barratier

Recently, I was at Caltech in Pasadena to hear my cousin give a lecture. My cousin is Stephen Hawking, the astrophysicist. He ended his lecture by saying, “Don’t look at your feet. Look at the sky. And stay curious.” It blew me away. I think I would say the same thing. I think it’s about observing the world around us. I think staying amazed and curious is wonderful. We do have this whole world of technology which is brilliant as tools, but I think it’s important to not be distracted. We have a tendency to be looking down whether it is at our feet or our phones. I think for any artist, “Continue looking up at the stars. Continue looking at the world around you, being amazed, and observing.”  I did some classes on botanical illustration. I found that every week the garden was completely new and changed. It was evolving constantly. By observing that evolution, you evolve yourself.

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Three Horizons Productions is a team of independent filmmakers who want to develop, acquire, and produce multi-media projects that showcase inspirational themes, compelling stories, and provocative characters to entertain or educate international audiences. Three Horizons Productions, located in Arizona, has a global outreach.

Thank you to everyone who visited our booth on Friday, April 5th at the Phoenix Film Festival. It was great meeting new people sharing the same passion as we do.

Congratulations to the three winners of our three Amazon Gift Cards:

PRIZE 1 – $100 – CHRISTOPHER SMITH

PRIZE 2 – $75 – ALISON DWIGHT

PRIZE 3 – $50 – LIZ BRADLEY

We look forward to connecting with all of you in 2013!

The THP Team

Guillermo del Toro, photo by Gage Skidmore

Among fans of the supernatural thriller genre, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s name conjures up anticipation, chills and discussion. His ingenuity and genre-bending approach to filmmaking have led to praise from fans as well as criticism from genre purists and those who balk at the symbolism endemic to his darker works such as Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. He also has contributed to mainstream action films with projects like the Hellboy franchise. He is a lover of fairy tales, monsters, horror and the imagination. Whether he is producing, directing or writing, his dark imaginative influences tendril through each film on which he works. He has indicated that he works under the premise: “things exist in the world that can be seen by only those who look.”

A native of Mexico, del Toro first worked as a makeup designer and helped to found the Guadalajara International Film Festival. His work is particularly recognizable because of his employment of religious allusions, insects, clocks and the use of symbolic lighting. Filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and Akira Kurosawa, authors H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King and artists Vermeer and Rodin are among his major creative influences. His eye for the visual as well as story development and use of symbolism, myth and iconography are tell-tale signs that you have entered one of del Toro’s worlds.

Cronos Art

Del Toro made his feature film debut with Cronos (1993). The film opens with an expository scene in which a 400-year-old device is found in the possession of an alchemist who lay dying following a building collapse in 1937. How did such a device and its owner survive for 400 years? What does the device mean? As the alchemist with translucent skin dies, his last words are “suo tempore.” In its time.

We jump to modern day Mexico. An older man [Federico Luppi] takes his granddaughter [Tamara Shanath] with him to his small antiques shop. The bright daylight of the outdoors is in contrast to the inside of the shop. The shop is dark with the heaviness of old wood and accented with del Toro’s signature use of clocks and clockwork types of devices. Soon, we see another mark of del Toro: insects. Del Toro has said that he has an obsession with clocks and insect-like creatures. He is interested in the contrast of living things and mechanisms.

In Cronos, del Toro also makes use of family relationships, which he seems to find very important and symbolic to his storytelling. The old man, whose name is Jesús Gris, and his relationship with his granddaughter Aurora are central to this film despite Aurora’s silence throughout the piece. At first, it seems Aurora’s role is supplementary. However, she becomes integral to the ultimate redemption of Jesús.

Hellboy Theatrical Release Poster

Another family relationship is between the ill and paranoid de la Guardia [Claudio Brook] and his temperamental and misplaced nephew Angel [Ron Perlman]. We have the sense that Angel is an American biding his time with his Mexican uncle in order to secure his money. (In fact this performance as Angel was Ron Perlman’s first role with del Toro. They would go on to greater success with the Hellboy franchise.)

Symbolism exists throughout del Toro’s work and is more than evident in Cronos. The cronos device itself – which may or may not prolong life – represents greed. De la Guardia desires the device while Jesús is enticed by its power so much so that we believe him to be a monster, yet still feel compassion for his plight. Del Toro has said that “humans are the real monsters” in his films. Jesús makes his choice to embrace his humanity with the help of Aurora.

Although violence does exist in the film, it is what the filmmaker calls a decision of “eye candy versus eye protein.” The violence is not gratuitous and must serve a purpose. We also see very little blood. Like a Vermeer painting, color illustrates a deeper level of the story. Red is used to represent life and death. Muted colors like that of de la Guardia’s factory are visual cues to the absence of humanity. Cinematographer Guillermo Navarro describes the film as a “story [that] has a connection with reality and then goes off in other directions.” As his first effort, del Toro shows his love of twisting genres. We never hear the word uttered, but Cronos is indeed a vampire tale. But who is really the vampire?

Artwork for El Laberinto del Fauno

Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno)

“We shy away from magic that is not explained.” – Guillermo del Toro.

Del Toro took another diversion into the world of myth and fantasy with 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth. He had just come off the success of the action films Blade II and Hellboy and decided to bring to film a story he had been working on for a number of years. Previously, he had directed The Devil’s Backbone, a tale about a young orphan faced with frightening circumstances in post-civil war Spain. He sees Pan’s Labyrinth as another chapter to the same theme. Ofelia [Ivana Baquero] is a young girl who finds herself dislocated from her home and traveling with her ill and pregnant mother, Carmen [Ariadna Gil], to join her new stepfather, Captain Vidal [Sergi López], a Falangist and officer in Francisco Franco’s army.

Setting is key in this film. Spain in 1944 was five years past its civil war, in the early years of the Franco regime and had remained technically neutral during World War II. In essence, Spain was isolated, its people suspicious of each other and still feeling the tension between republican loyalists and Falangist fascists. Del Toro undoubtedly received some inspiration from Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), which is considered one of the greatest Spanish films of all time. In his film, Erice tells his story through the point of view of Ana, a little girl who lives in a small Castilian village with her sister and parents. The time is also the 1940s and the legacy of the civil war lays heavy in the lives of the adults in Ana’s life.

Scene from Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive

Erice used symbolism and color schemes to represent aspects of Ana’s experience. Ana views James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) with her sister and other villagers. However, Ana becomes obsessed with the movie after the scene depicting the accidental death of the child, Maria, and the monster’s subsequent and brutal death at the hands of an angry mob. As she is working through this experience, she briefly aids a republican loyalist on the run. He is found and shot. For her, the similarities with the monster’s story are overwhelming. She runs away overnight. When she is found, she must be “reborn.” Erice has described it as her transition from the innocence and otherworldly place of childhood to the world of reality. Ana’s growth is symbolic of the transition of Spain itself following the civil war.

Del Toro pulls heavily on this concept of a child symbolizing a society in transition. Ofelia, like Erice’s Ana, is in a place of transition. She is moving from childhood into a more mature phase. She still lives in a world of innocence and magic. She is portrayed with simplicity and fundamentally unable to commit any violence against a living being, despite rough treatment by her stepfather. Since she is still young, she is compelled to obey her own imagination. Ofelia reminds us of other young girls on the verge of a rite of passage, such as Alice as she goes through the looking glass and Dorothy as she seeks answers from the wizard. We enter into a world of fairy tale.

Ivana Baquero as Ofelia

Doug Jones as the Faun

The faun [Doug Jones] and his world that Ofelia comes to discover are represented as ancient and outside of time. The supernatural merges with the natural world. Del Toro’s work as a designer shines through in the special effects, which relied on scale models, makeup, costuming as well as digital effects. After several viewings, I realized that the faun is gnarled like the roots of an old tree at the beginning of the story. By the film’s end, he seems lighter and younger. The faun is in contrast to the pale man, who we find seated at the banquet table. The pale man is decrepit and grotesque. Ofelia runs from him in fear as he grabs at the fairies the faun has provided Ofelia and tears into their flesh, an act reminiscent of Spanish artist Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son.

Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son

Del Toro has described the faun as not being a bad creature as we would suppose. He goes on to describe the world of the labyrinth, Ofelia’s fantasy world, as more nurturing than the real world and illustrates it such with warm tones and textures in opposition to the real world which appears icy and blue. The only time in the real world we see warmth is between Ofelia and her mother and when the sympathetic servant and secret rebel Mercedes [Maribel Verdú] sings a lullaby to Ofelia. As del Toro says, “Films are made of looks.”

Mama

 “A movie is a collaboration.” – Guillermo del Toro.

Theatrical poster for Mama

Recently released Mama was not written or directed by del Toro, but he did executive produce the film after he saw the Muschietti siblings’ short film Mamá. He was so impressed with the film that he decided to throw the weight of his name and expertise into a feature film based on the story. Again, this movie relies heavily on the point of view of children. Sisters, Victoria [Megan Charpentier] and Lilly [Isabelle Nélisse], are lost in a remote cabin in the woods for five years. Once they are discovered and brought back to live with their uncle [Nikolaj Coster-Waldau] and his girlfriend [Jessica Chastain], questions arise. How did they survive alone in the wilderness? Were they alone?

The movie is a fascinating look into a phenomenon known as “feral children”. Unverified accounts and legends exist of children who have somehow survived alone in the wild. This film’s story is an interesting twist on those legends. Victoria and Lilly bring back more than stunted communication and social skills. Again, genres twist and bend somewhat. The film possesses the elements of a supernatural thriller, fantasy, drama and horror. Although violence occurs in the movie, gore is not present – as much of the violence occurs quickly or outside the point of view of the camera.

Mama does have a number of plot holes; however, it is an absorbing first feature by Andrés and Barbara Muschietti. The young girls who portrayed Victoria and Lilly were amazing in their roles. It is easy to see why del Toro wanted to support these filmmakers. Although the film left me with questions, I am haunted by the world it created.

Guillermo del Toro’s signature style has done a great deal to move the supernatural thriller genre forward. After decades of horror films relying heavily on gore and gratuitous violence, films such as del Toro’s Cronos and Pan’s Labyrinth as well as his collaboration on films like Mama have reignited interest in the supernatural thriller. Independent film companies like Three Horizons Productions (THP) have embraced the supernatural thriller genre. THP’s short film Out Of Focus and forthcoming feature film The Kiss highlight the unique storytelling vehicle of the genre. We may step into a world in which things may not be as they seem. It is a world of imagination, choices and labyrinths.

The Kiss

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Three Horizons Productions is a team of independent filmmakers who want to develop, acquire, and produce multi-media projects that showcase inspirational themes, compelling stories, and provocative characters to entertain or educate international audiences. Three Horizons Productions, located in Arizona, has a global outreach.

Out Of Focus – Supernatural Thriller

Phoenix, Arizona, Monday, March 26, 2013—Honor and excitement are the bylines for Three Horizons Productions (THP). We have confirmation that a 15-minute version of THP’s debut supernatural thriller short film Out Of Focus has been accepted to the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival. This opportunity will give THP’s core team a chance to explore resources and to network with other film professionals.

The THP contingent will consist of writer/producer/director Remi Vaughn; cinematographer Luis Bohorquez; production designer Jim Aiken; Arizona State University (ASU) interns Holly Van Dvoorde, who was selected by the ASU film department to assist the team while at Cannes, and Richard Mulvihill, who was selected by the Creative Mind Group into their Network Connection program.

The team is busy finalizing travel plans, strategy and, of course, brushing up on their French. The goal is to make the most of the festival and its marketing resources. Remi Vaughn says, “Our objectives are to meet other filmmakers and industry professionals, promote The Kiss, Out Of Focus as a feature film, the Supernatural Film Festival (SF2), and other projects in the pipeline.”

Vertigo Poster

In an ongoing look into the supernatural thriller genre history, I decided to revisit a Hollywood classic, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Hitchcock is well-remembered for his fastidious attention to detail: the acting, the cinematography, and the visual effects. It is a meticulous vision to which the team here at Three Horizons Productions (THP) aspires (as evidenced in the premiere of its flagship short film, Out of Focus). Among those who study and those who are fans of Hitchcock’s work, Vertigo continues to fascinate viewers with its many levels of filmmaking and storytelling such as: the darker and obsessive sides of romance and beauty, the dueling impulses of the pull, the dread of greed and desire, and the use of the elusive possibilities of the supernatural illusion. Let us not forget abject fear (as manifested in the acrophobia of the main character, “Scottie” Ferguson [Jimmy Stewart]).

Initially, the viewer is brought into the uncertain footing and dizzying world of Vertigo through the music of Bernard Herrmann, who simultaneously evokes panic and longing right from the opening credits of the film. These credits are famous and distinctive for the swirling kinetic typography of innovative graphic designer Saul Bass and artist John Whitney’s Lissajous spirals (interestingly created using a curve algorithm discovered by French mathematician Jules Antoine Lissajous in the 19^th century). The whirlpool of the title sequence begins and ends with the tightly filmed view of Madeleine’s (Kim Novak) eyes seemingly laying a clue to the vortex of desire and confusion that is in store for Scottie.

The opening sequence is only the first of many visceral sensations utilized by Hitchcock, not only to bring the viewer physically into the story, but also to set us up for the intensity of sensation experienced by Scottie Ferguson, as he loses his police partner in a rooftop chase and struggles to find his footing in his personal and professional life. He is further thrown into a chaotic space when his old friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) requests his experience as a detective. Scottie is to follow Gavin’s wife Madeleine, who has been acting in an odd fashion, as though she were suddenly someone else. Gavin lays the ground for a supernatural illusion by telling Scottie that he needs to protect his wife from “someone dead.” Scottie bulks at this tale at first but inevitably agrees to investigate Gavin’s concerns.

Hitchcock leads us into the vertiginous progression of the film as we pursue Scottie following Madeleine. She moves quickly and mysteriously from a flower stall to San Francisco’s historic Dolores Mission and its cemetery, where she stops by the grave of Carlotta Valdes, to the Palace of the Legion of Honor art museum and on to the McKittrick Hotel, where he finds she visits a room and seemingly disappears. His doubt in supernatural forces is tested when the landlady of the hotel claims she had not seen the woman she knows as Carlotta enter the building that day.

Mission Dolores, San Francisco

Soon, we meet Scottie’s former fiancée and good friend, Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes). She seems to be a grounding presence for him. It is my personal opinion that she represents a different kind of woman other than the ethereal, delicate Madeleine. Midge is independent, she works as a fashion designer for ladies’ undergarments, she’s also an artist who’s full of humor, a lover of music and she feels no societal or fashion pressure to don a hat when she takes Scottie out to meet Pop (Konstantin Shayne), a bookseller who knows the stories of local color such as that of Carlotta Valdes. She is the model of a modern woman as Hitchcock envisioned—intelligent, sophisticated and blonde—similar to Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) in The Birds, Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) in North by Northwest, and Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) in Rear Window.

Kim Novak in Vertigo

Once we learn the origin of Carlotta’s suffering, Gavin reveals that Carlotta is Madeleine’s great-grandmother and that Madeleine’s ancestry to Carlotta has been kept secret because of Madeleine’s descent into madness and subsequent suicide. It is deemed by Gavin that Madeleine is just too delicate in order to process this reality. Scottie is pulled by these secrets into an obsession with Madeleine. He follows her every move, including to Fort Point, just below the Golden Gate. In this quiet place, Scottie witnesses her strange behavior as she drops flowers into the San Francisco Bay. Seconds later she jumps into the cold water. Scottie goes in to save her.

Madeleine’s ghostly-possessed suicide attempt brings more doubts and confusion to Scottie. Instead of taking her home or to a hospital, he chooses to take the unconscious Madeleine to his apartment on Lombard Street, which is famous as San Francisco’s most winding—and vertiginous—street in the city. In the distance, this “background” vertigo is supported by the view of Coit Tower rising high over the city’s hills. Within this backdrop, Scottie awakens Madeleine and speaks to her for the first time. She is seemingly unaware of the day’s events and merely implies she became dizzy and accidentally fell into the bay. As Scottie attempts to draw her out, he receives a call from Gavin while Madeleine once again mysteriously disappears.

Lombard Street, San Francisco

At this point, Hitchcock moves full force into the realm of supernatural possibility. As Scottie pursues Madeleine, he follows her back to his apartment where he convinces her to go on a drive to the redwood forest with him. Once they arrive in the old growth grove, he remarks how the redwood is known as Sequoia sempervirens, “everlasting.” As Madeleine looks at a cross section of the long-lived redwood, she starts to fade into another persona. As she points to different rings of the tree, she says, “Here I was born and there I died. It was only a moment for you. You took no notice.” Suddenly, she is someone else. Scottie pursues her as she attempts to flee. She plants more confusion in him as she cries, “When I go into the darkness, I’ll die.” She relates a vision of a tower and a bell as well as a woman inside her, who says she must die.

Following this frightening turn of events, Scottie becomes inexorably involved with Madeleine. His romantic obsession has blinded him to other aspects of his life. His friend Midge must pursue a visit from him as he has stopped dropping by of his own accord. Midge attempts to bring him back around to their day-to-day banter by showing him a picture she painted of herself portrayed as the ill-fated Carlotta Valdes. Scottie leaves upset and angry. Her attempt to draw him into the sometimes gallows humor of daily life has failed. We observe a break in Midge’s cool demeanor. We now know she still holds romantic feelings for Scottie and is frustrated when she sees her attempts to bring him back into their friendship has failed. The supernatural darkness of Madeleine/Carlotta has taken Scottie from his former life and thrown him into a frantic pursuit of a woman, who may or may not still exist.

Scottie meets up with Madeleine again on Lombard Street. They discuss her visions of darkness and the bell tower. He becomes convinced that she must be talking about the old Spanish mission at San Juan Bautista. (The real mission at San Juan Bautista does not have a bell tower, but the location lends itself to the historical mystique of such a story as that of Carlotta Valdes.) Scottie drives Madeleine to San Juan Bautista in the hopes of exorcising the anxious demons from her vision. He, despite his doubts, continues his attempt to find logical explanations for everything she is experiencing.

Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak in Vertigo

At the old mission, Scottie and Madeleine kiss. Suddenly, she tears herself away from his embrace and runs to the bell tower. At this point, we must revel in the vision of Hitchcock and his cinematographer Robert Burks and his team. Burks’ team created a technique to re-establish the visceral sense of vertigo (IMDB credits Irmin Roberts with the dolly in/zoom out technique). By filming the tower steps in a scale model turned on its side, while the camera moved back as it zoomed in, we gain the disconcerting acrophobic point of view of Scottie, who is trying to overcome his fear in order to follow Madeleine. He can’t quite get over the crest of his phobia and at the last minute sees the object of his obsession seemingly jump to her death.

Jimmy Stewart In Vertigo

As the final scenes commence, we are left wondering if this supernatural possession by a long dead ancestor has captured the femme fatale. During the subsequent inquest, the investigator lambasts Scottie for his inability to stop Madeleine from her fate. We are told he blacked out and didn’t come to his senses until he made it back to San Francisco. Still, her death is ruled a suicide. Gavin, who is more than magnanimous for a man who has been recently widowed, bids his farewell to Scottie and says, “You and I both know who killed Madeleine.” Did Madeleine’s cursed progenitor reach from beyond the grave to enact a similar dark fate on her descendant?

Next, we see the power of psychological stress transfer from Madeleine to Scottie as he dreams of falling into blankness and relives Madeleine’s fall. His nervous breakdown sends him to the hospital for quite some time. Midge reappears at his bedside and tries without success to bring him back to the realm of the living. She leaves disheartened. Eventually, Scottie is back on his feet and coherent though still not well. Once discharged, he resumes haunting the places Madeleine once visited such as the Legion of Honor, the restaurant at which he first saw her and the flower seller. Every woman he sees he strains to recognize Madeleine. Suddenly, he sees a woman with Madeleine’s profile. He stalks her to a cheap hotel. He begs her to talk to him and questions her. He tells her she reminds him of someone. She responds, “Yes. I’ve heard that before.” His obsession has transferred to this new woman, Judy Barton (Kim Novak).

Scottie convinces Judy to go to dinner. While he leaves to get ready, we see her compose a letter to him explaining how she was hired by Gavin to pose as Madeleine in order to lay the ground for a supernatural possession and suicide. Meanwhile, the real Madeleine was murdered. Her body was the one thrown from the mission tower. Judy also admits that, although not part of the plan, she had fallen in love with Scottie. As she writes, she decides against leaving the confession and rips up the letter. She decides to play out the course in hope that Scottie will fall in love with her and not with the idea of Madeleine.

As this uneven relationship shifts upon much more uneven ground, Scottie begins the attempt to transform Judy into a replica of his Madeleine. Once he has dressed and coiffed her as Madeleine, he sees her transformation as a ghost of Madeleine. Judy makes one fatal error. Overconfident in her ruse and her desire, she decides to wear the necklace that once had belonged to Carlotta. It was part of her pay off from Gavin. Her misstep pulls Scottie out of his obsessive haze. Roughly, he informs her that he is taking her somewhere. He decides to drive her to Mission San Juan Bautista.

Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock once again leads us into the roller coaster of this psychological thriller. Tension mounts on Scottie’s and Judy’s drive to the mission. He informs her he knows to whom the necklace belongs. He has guessed that he has been duped. She begs for his understanding and runs to the tower. Still frightened but with intense drive, Scottie pursues her and confronts her in the bell tower. As Judy attempts to explain her role as that of an ill-informed participant, Scottie becomes increasingly angry. However, as tensions rise, footsteps are heard and a black figure appears in the shadows. Spooked, Judy panics and inadvertently falls out of the tower to her death.

This tale of greed, desire and obsession relies on the perceived illusion of the supernatural. The dark corners of human experience perpetuate and exploit the frailty of the human experience. The illusion of a supernatural force works to keep the viewer gripping the edge of their seat. THP is working on a new psychological thriller (with a touch of the supernatural in art) called The Kiss. What dark influences may be lurking in the shadows? Stay focused.

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Three Horizons Productions is a team of independent filmmakers who want to develop, acquire, and produce multi-media projects that showcase inspirational themes, compelling stories, and provocative characters to entertain or educate international audiences. Three Horizons Productions, located in Arizona, has a global outreach.

THP is also launching the first Supernatural Film Fest – SF2 – in Phoenix, AZ… stay tuned for more info and submit your short film!

My name is Remi Vaughn and, with two business associates, I own a film/multi-media production company, right here in Scottsdale, AZ. In writing this open letter, I state freely that I have no affiliation with any lobbyists, financiers, or other influential investors. I write as a resident of Arizona, voter, local business owner, and film/multi-media professional.

In Arizona, local film/multi-media business entrepreneurs and professionals are faced with an uphill battle to draw film productions, commercial shoots, TV show productions, game creations, mobile device content generation, etc. to our state. Instead, the revenues and other financial benefits end up in neighboring states that offer attractive tax credits or incentives for the film/multi-media industry. Local production houses and professionals tend to commute to other states (such as: e.g., New Mexico, Louisiana, California, or Utah) so they can generate revenues for their business and wages for their talented resources – or they simply leave Arizona, a dismal trend led by the students who are graduating from local schools, creating a vacuum in skill sets.

On the positive side, Arizona does offer multiple and well-respected educational programs – from high school to university – in filmmaking and multi-media production. However, talented students cannot make a living in their areas of expertise here at home, since productions are simply not choosing Arizona as a financially viable state to produce their film projects or multi-media projects.

But the reality is that Arizona doesn’t have a positive reputation in the film/multi-media industry due to past disrespectful behaviors (being overcharged for services has been mentioned multiple times by industry professionals in Los Angeles) and inequitable treatment of clients (larger clients got a better treatment than smaller clients, e.g.).

When you combine the opportunity loss of revenues by local production houses, and the opportunity loss of wages by local talent – all we have left is an exodus of businesses and talent… and the vicious cycle continues: clients know they can’t find what they need and want here, so they’ll go next door… a never-ending cycle – until we, the state government, the local industry, and the schools, come together, supported by a state tax incentive program to turn things around in our favor.

Our state must look to new industries for its future – not only building on its traditional sources of revenues (mining, tourism, and real estate), but it is our duty to plan ahead and fill in the economic gap when industries leave the state: e.g., U.S. Airways.

Despite the current grim outlook for a positive economy and vibrant community in the filmmaking and multi-media industry, Three Horizons Productions believes that the local film/multi-media industry can become a strong political and economic force to attract film/multi-media productions to Arizona.

Now, moving forward, it is very important that we, local production business entrepreneurs, understand that there is no need for unhealthy competition amongst each other: this will only lead to the demise of our industry in Arizona (or at least will stop any chance for future growth). We must understand that we can only be successful by joining forces and collaborating to provide the best services to our clients (be they from Hollywood or small indie filmmakers).  The major criteria for success is to maximize everyone’s talent and call upon each other for bridging the gaps we may have – and even more importantly, we must aim at treating every client with respect and fairness. All the tax credits or incentives in the world won’t make a difference if we fail in our business relationships and if we fail to retain the local talent.

With this letter, Three Horizons Productions proposes that the triumvirate consisting of state government, local businesses, and schools, sets forth two key objectives as a starting point to create a sustainable film and multi-media industry:

1. The establishment of economically advantageous business partnerships and viable financial models that will support any future tax incentive programs Arizona puts in place;
2. The formalization of a professional internship and apprenticeship program in collaboration with film/multi-media production houses and schools (public and private) bridging the gap between education and real-life experience

Without some tax incentive support to level the playing field with our neighboring states, Arizona has little or no future to benefit from a $90+ billion per year industry (inclusive of all multi-media fields) that is one of the few U.S. industries with a strong positive balance of trade (7%+ of total US private sector services). Another interesting fact is that the film/multi-media industry is fairly recession proof when compared to other economic trends (such as the Consumer Pricing Index, average Dow Jones Index, or the average return on mutual funds).

Another interesting observation to make is that there used to be a sustainable film/media industry, right here, in Arizona. We know it was successful from the John Ford era up through the mid 80’s. Books, documentaries, and TV programs have been made on the topic to remind us all that with state support, business collaboration, and talent the film/multi-media industry can indeed flourish and bring in the revenues we all need.

From an intangible – yet critical – perspective, the film and multi-media industry is one that can be stamped as really Made In America; one that cannot be easily outsourced, with some exceptions (e.g., computer graphics are sometimes outsourced to Asia). It is our chance, right here, in Arizona to create a permanent film and multi-media industry – time is of the essence.

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Three Horizons Productions is a team of independent filmmakers who want to develop, acquire, and produce multi-media projects that showcase inspirational themes, compelling stories, and provocative characters to entertain or educate international audiences. Three Horizons Productions, located in Arizona, has a global outreach.

Coming to Albuquerque, NM March 8

Filmstock Film Festival was founded in 2009. The founders wished to recognize the power and the creativity of the short film format while focusing on presenting a locally engaged audience with innovative projects. This year, Filmstock is expanding to the Four Corners region and will deliver independent short films to a diverse audience from inside and outside the film industry in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona.

James Lee has worked with Filmstock Film Festival since its inception. Today, he organizes the festival as it grows. While Three Horizons Productions (THP) is busy developing its own Supernatural Film Festival for fall 2013, Mr. Lee generously agreed to discuss Filmstock and what it takes to organize a short film festival.

How did you get involved with the festival?

I was one of the first filmmakers to submit to it. I loved the fact that people I had never met would see my work. For a filmmaker, that’s the best thing: having people to see your work. That’s why we do it. We want as broad of an audience as possible. There’s nothing better than having someone you don’t know laugh, cry or get scared at something that you made. The film festival provides that. Filmstock is one of the first festivals that I experienced out of film school.

I got to know the people who organized it. Over the past two or three years, I’ve gotten more involved. We have expanded the mission and now accept submissions outside of Arizona. However, it started as an Arizona festival for Arizona filmmakers showing Arizona shorts to an Arizona audience. I wanted to start getting some fresh ideas not only for filmmakers but also for the audience. Now filmmakers and audiences have more networking opportunities, in addition to seeing work outside of their region and outside of the people they know, while gaining exposure to some new radical ideas. Ever since then, our mission has been to connect audiences with creative visionaries.

Is this the first year Filmstock Film Festival will be going to four states?

That’s correct. I’ve been organizing the entire festival since 2012. I continually think, “How do I get good filmmakers in front of more people?” We’re really honing in on attracting those visionaries. You have to have a good audience to attract great visionaries. I tried thinking about different formats. The idea came up, “What if Filmstock ran a festival in each of the Four Corner states?” New Mexico, Colorado, Utah— in addition to Arizona. They all have the Southwestern identity to them. It provides short filmmakers with more opportunity, I think, than any other festival out there.

There will be four award winners for each of the Filmstock Film Festivals. If your film is one of the top four award winners, you will be moved on to the next three states. It will be an on-going rotation of films. By the time it comes to Arizona, the audience will be able to see 12 award- winning films. Each audience will have a fresh batch of selections.

What are the logistics involved in taking the festival on the road?

It’s not the easiest thing in the world, but it is easier than you might think. It really depends on relationships and how well you are able to develop those relationships with people you can trust. As with any film project, you are depending on people to execute some of the finishes.

I wanted something that would inspire people. Having this festival in four states isn’t just taking it on the road but is establishing it in those four states. The message really resonates well with everyone who comes aboard the team. Because of that team, organization actually has been fairly easy. Communication mostly is virtual. I have a team in each of the states. I do travel, but most of what we do happens over email, phone and other types of virtual coordination. Being organized is probably the most difficult part. My experience as a filmmaker lends itself to organization. That skill has served the team well. Everyone is excited and committed. I offer a lot of leeway to each team as far as what local flavor applies to that festival’s event.

The goal is to meet everyone in the filmmaking community in that state. It’s a fantastic way to put new life into your work as a filmmaker. It’s a terrific opportunity to work with a lot of people. Working with a festival can broaden a filmmaker’s horizons.

What are the criteria for Filmstock’s film selection?

Anything that is under 30 minutes may be accepted as a submission. Otherwise, it is a festival for the audience. We need to make the audience feel at home. We want to encourage audiences to show up. We want films that have an impact on the viewer. We want films that are entertaining and insightful in some way. We are looking for creative visionaries. We are looking for films that are new and fresh. Production value is a big part of that. I ask my selection team: “Would you, in good conscience, invite a friend or family member who has nothing to do with films to the festival and know they would enjoy it?” Everyone has a different taste in movies. We have a fairly diverse submissions team to make sure our program is as well-rounded as possible.

So, you are not genre-specific?

No, we are not. We do program in blocks of genres and themes. We make sure there is a good flow to the program.

Tell me about the Filmstock Grant Project

The grant project is awesome! What better way to connect audiences with filmmakers than to donate part of each ticket to a local visionary. We have a period in which directors, producers or filmmakers can apply for the grant. We ask what the project is about, links to the project, what sort of an impact you’ve made already, how much you are looking to raise, how much you are looking to spend locally, how many people you are planning to employ, how many people you are planning to volunteer and how many people you are planning to intern. Then, what are you planning on doing with the project when it’s done? Are you looking to get it on different distribution channels? What audience are you trying to reach?

It’s awarded to one project in each region. Part of each ticket in New Mexico will go to The Hunt Legionnaire. It’s a web series. They are looking to make a great project and get a lot of attention for filmmaking in New Mexico, which does have a good filmmaking pedigree. My vision is that as the festival grows, so does the grant. Last year, in Arizona, we designated Wes Martinez’s project The Conduit as the recipient for the grant. It’s already had success. It’s a great way to engage the community.

Beyond ticket sales, what do you do for advertising and raising money?

For advertising, we mostly use social media outlets, our website and word of mouth. We have sponsorship opportunities. In fact, Three Horizons Productions has a spot. We don’t aggressively pursue sponsors. We just need audience members for a successful run.

What has been one of your major successes with Filmstock?

This year, a major success has been working with the City of Albuquerque’s film office. They gave us the use of a 660-seat theater in downtown. It is completely sponsored by the city. I’m very excited about it. I think it really resonates with people.

We have other successes like the Barry E. Wallace Award. We have also been able to improve our program. Our 2012 program was spot on. We had a lot of folks show up. Our exit surveys showed that everyone loved the movies. Our content was stellar. I spent about four hours a day for three months contacting filmmaker after filmmaker to make sure we found the best films. It paid off. Now word has gotten out. We’re on Withoutabox. Submissions come in now with little to no effort and we have made some great partnerships. We also were able to obtain the film rights to show Shane Acker’s original short film 9 at our 2012 closing.

Filmstock Film Festival opens in the Land of Enchantment on March 8, 2013, at the KiMo Theatre in Albuquerque. The circuit continues on to Colorado in June, Utah in September and will wind up 2013 in Arizona. Award-winning, unique films will be announced at each festival. Be sure to check out the Filmstock Film Festival website for the latest updates.

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Three Horizons Productions is a team of independent filmmakers who want to develop, acquire, and produce multi-media projects that showcase inspirational themes, compelling stories, and provocative characters to entertain or educate international audiences. Three Horizons Productions, located in Arizona, has a global outreach.