Uncomfortable Filmmaking Studio Website Review

What’s Going On Alice?

Keira Gardener

What’s Going On Alice? is a short film by Keira Gardener that explores “how creepy live studio audiences and laugh tracks would be if they existed in real life” through the protagonist, Alice (Kiera Gardener 2023). The film follows a three act structure, with the first act showing the fake show format, the second part hinting at the cracks in Alice’s reality and the third act revealing the illusion of Alice’s reality through the addition of ‘the Audience Member’ — an unnamed member of the laughing track crowd that has materialised into Alice’s apartment, and thus into the show. 

In her reflection of the making process, Kiera noted how she “wanted to play around with the feeling of paranoia for the most part, [leaving] questions unanswered and endings unfinished” (Kiera Gardener 2023). In this sense, Kiera focused on creating discomfort in her film through the films content and form, as the film imbues the audience with a distorted sense of reality — like that of The Truman Show (1998) or Fractured (2019) — and lack of trust in the protagonist’s perception of reality. Additionally, the film is aware of itself as a form, and comments on this through text, laughing tracks and fourth wall breaks. 

A key affordance of the uncomfortable filmmaking approach is the ability to create discomfort through any means of breaking film conventions. Although this enabled any interpretation of creating an uncomfortable film, it also meant sometimes trying to fit too much in, thus undermining the effect of the film to make an audience uncomfortable. Kiera (2023) reflected that she “learnt that you can always add more, play around with footage in different ways, [and] experiment more, even when you think you are done. I also learnt however that you need to know when to stop adding and be happy with what you have created.”. Through experimentation we learn what works and what doesn’t in film, and that was a core lesson of this studio; to experiment beyond the finish line and try new things even when we are content with the current piece. Kiera was effective in communicating how experimentation was additive to the process of making What’s Going On Alice?, and how it meant that her final film was better as a result of this pushing of her boundaries.

Explore

Wren Hartley

Wren Hartley’s short film, Explore, is a mockumentary style fiction film — I think about an outsider arriving in Australia and being amused by the wildlife and culture here — presented through a robot voiceover and archival footage of animals, maps, Australia and the UK. The film intermittently cuts to a blue screen with a beeping noise drowning out the voiceover and ambient music. Throughout the film this continues, with no particular consistency or reasoning.  

In his reflection of the filmmaking process, Wren touches on a key ideology of the Uncomfortable Filmmaking studio that Kiralee instilled within us; that ‘uncomfortable filmmaking’ can simply be the discomfort of the creator in the making of their film. Discomfort in trying something new or unfamiliar, discomfort in the inability to make something, discomfort when things go wrong and how to adapt to that. I feel that without noticing it Wren experienced this discomfort in the making of his film, as he noted that: “after writing a few scripts and starting to put [the footage] together [the] idea wasn’t really working. I also had a big problem with time, and had to ditch my own filmed footage which I know will impact my mark but I think was the right decision in the end”. Additionally, Wren mentioned how there is a plot and meaning behind his film, yet upon viewing Explore, the content is not explicit to the viewers, or at least to me. This falls into the uncomfortable filmmaking experience, as as a viewer I am unsatisfied with the lack of palpable information that I can read into or understand. I think Wren was very successful in making an uncomfortable film, one that is simultaneously confusing and deeply humorous.

Real People, Real Lives Studio Website Review

Real People, Reel Lives conveyed the significance of film as a format to tell people’s stories through documentary style cinematography. Life in 35mm, a short film by Ellesha Atukorala, Karmen Pei and Yixuan Huang, follows the story of Yuci Zhang and her passion for film photography. Similarly, Jessie Rowes, Vallon, told the story of Tasmanian farmer Jo Lee’s passion for flower growing and her life living and working on her farm. Both stories are based on real people and their experiences, they are nonfiction and told through a singular perspective. In the case of Life in 35mm and Vallon, the documentary is about a sole person — “Real People”. Through this, their voice is given a platform, meaning that they are a co-creator and co-writer alongside the director, as they dictate the story of themselves that they tell. Unlike journalism or exploitative documentary, Real People, Reel Lives clearly aimed to portray the subject accurately and to their perception of themselves. The short form video style, or reel, underpins the content of the studio; the documentaries are short in length and thus more engaging for young audiences, they are sweet doses of reality. The ‘reel’ format also seems to dismiss the general ‘A roll and B roll’ structure of documentaries and has made the films more fast paced and textured. Both Life in 35mm and Vallon have a wide range of shot types, scenes and settings, yet they are cohesive and stick to one aesthetic. Overall, I think Real People, Reel Lives’ focus as a studio was to create short, engaging documentary style videos in co-creation with whomever they were making the film about, and based on Life in 35mm and Vallon, the studio succeeded in teaching and portraying that.

Life in 35mm

Ellesha Atukorala, Karmen Pei & Yixuan Huang

Vallon 

Jessie Rowe