On Making Gillian
I love making movies on a shoestring budget with tight schedules.
It's a test of ones ability to budget with both time and money to
compete in the Seven Day Film Festival and Competition. The production
of "Gillian" was difficult because some really solid ideas had to be
scrapped when we got the medical theme of the competition. I also like
to give trans people of all stripes the opportunity to play the parts
and write the scripts in my productions.
Each team had to be made from volunteers and our team, A Fein Mess, was used to working together from last years competition. Personally, I thought about our characters and their relationship as a lesbian one at first and we crafted Michal as a butch trans woman. But at the end of writing our script with the competition almost half way over, our team was having trouble finding someone who fit the part and also had a female identity.
That is when I realized that we were trying too hard to fit the character to a specific identity and we needed a more fluid outlook. Enter Mim, a local gender fluid artist and friend. I asked Mim if they would like to play a female born genderqueer person on the masculine spectrum. After Mim read the script, ze was really psyched to be our Michal and I took the original script and modified the language and tone to accommodate the new gender identity. Mim and Lisa, who played the title bi cisgender character Gillian, became fast friends and had instant chemistry.
I hoped to create a metaphor where the brace represented Gillian's repressive life with her boyfriend. Where the contrast of her relationship with Michal was stark, but also showed a way out of one relationship into another. Instead of being dependent on Steff, perhaps she is dependent upon Michal in the future, perhaps not. It is really up to the audience to decide how this ends.
The writing team was fast and furious with the script. We only had a few days of writing. When Sunday's filming rolled around, we were down two actors and had to do a massive rewrite, dumping all scenes that required the fourth character. I had to jump in and take the role of Steff and feel the destructive apathy towards Gillian. I had to dredge up all of my bad behavior as a partner to make the character work. Steff's reaction to Gillian and her knee is one of disgust at her dependence on him.
Gillian's nature was one of ambiguity. Regardless of how she was to his face, she was ambivalent towards Steff with Michal. Not wanting to admit that Steff was all that bad. Perhaps we only saw him on his worst days, or perhaps he was just a real jerk with no redeeming qualities. I think we left a lot of ambiguity in the film for the audience to play with and talk about.
Each team had to be made from volunteers and our team, A Fein Mess, was used to working together from last years competition. Personally, I thought about our characters and their relationship as a lesbian one at first and we crafted Michal as a butch trans woman. But at the end of writing our script with the competition almost half way over, our team was having trouble finding someone who fit the part and also had a female identity.
That is when I realized that we were trying too hard to fit the character to a specific identity and we needed a more fluid outlook. Enter Mim, a local gender fluid artist and friend. I asked Mim if they would like to play a female born genderqueer person on the masculine spectrum. After Mim read the script, ze was really psyched to be our Michal and I took the original script and modified the language and tone to accommodate the new gender identity. Mim and Lisa, who played the title bi cisgender character Gillian, became fast friends and had instant chemistry.
I hoped to create a metaphor where the brace represented Gillian's repressive life with her boyfriend. Where the contrast of her relationship with Michal was stark, but also showed a way out of one relationship into another. Instead of being dependent on Steff, perhaps she is dependent upon Michal in the future, perhaps not. It is really up to the audience to decide how this ends.
The writing team was fast and furious with the script. We only had a few days of writing. When Sunday's filming rolled around, we were down two actors and had to do a massive rewrite, dumping all scenes that required the fourth character. I had to jump in and take the role of Steff and feel the destructive apathy towards Gillian. I had to dredge up all of my bad behavior as a partner to make the character work. Steff's reaction to Gillian and her knee is one of disgust at her dependence on him.
Gillian's nature was one of ambiguity. Regardless of how she was to his face, she was ambivalent towards Steff with Michal. Not wanting to admit that Steff was all that bad. Perhaps we only saw him on his worst days, or perhaps he was just a real jerk with no redeeming qualities. I think we left a lot of ambiguity in the film for the audience to play with and talk about.
