FILM PROJECT 2 – Mumblecore Research

Mumblecore is a genre of film, commonly attributed in it’s creation to Andrew Bujalksi, with the Duplass brothers and Joe Swanberg coming not long after. It is a style of cinema that’s main characteristic is naturalistic dialogue. While there are various other characteristics often attributed to the subgenre, this is the major one that I will focus on. I plan on integrating that with other more experimental and ‘cinematic’ stylistic choices, a fusion that has already been made to great success in the years since the rise of mumblecore.

While I watched some of the original films (Funny Ha Ha, Hannah Goes To Dinner, The Puffy Chair), I’ve also taken in more recent ‘mumblecore’ films (Frances Ha, Drinking Buddies, Tiny Furniture, Daddy Longlegs) as I feel their style more closely resembles what I’m going for. More than cinema though, I have found myself drawn more to recent television series’ that can be attributed to the mumblecore genre. Lena Dunham’s Girls, Donald Glover’s Atlanta, Katja Blichfeld & Ben Sinclair’s High Maintenance, & Joe Swanberg’s Easy have all been major inspirations on me to choose this project and topic.

The shows perfectly blend realistic and relatable characters, with whom the dialogue and interactions with each other are in some form improvised and extremely naturalistic, with modern and interesting filmmaking. Easy & High Maintenance are both anthology shows, meaning each episode contains a new story with (primarily) completely different characters every episode. This style allows for the audience to be simply dropped into situations in certain people’s lives, with very little context given. The intrigue comes from the audience’s curiosity in learning about these new characters and their unique lives and viewpoints. While there are narratives, sometimes episodes will just go about a day in a life, which for a new character is entertaining for the viewer as they haven’t seen this already as they would with a pre-established character. This philosophy is what has heavily inspired me to create my piece, which will simply be a short slice of life of these characters I have created, heavily inspired by my own life.