spend the last week of my life making red envelopes one frame at a time.
I still don't regret shooting in thirty frames per second
going to wear a wrist brace and export the film today :)
Delta Phi as Litmus Test
How can I describe my relationship to Delta Phi right now? It feels like the heaviest and lightest project I’ve done at once.
On the one hand, I’m a novelist, used to spending a year or far longer on a single story. Used to living with the same characters for decades. Long enough to have conclusive concepts behind the work. Long enough to make a story that is unified and feels resolved, like a conclusion about something that also brings up more questions.
Delta Phi feels a bit different. Although I developed the premise for years, the script was written in a few short months. It felt like a collection of ideas; it was chronological and teleological, but played host to many concepts. The script needed the production to pull the concepts together. The production itself was a litmus test to determine the strongest and weakest aspects of the script. Delta Phi, from the beginning, was in every sense an experiment. I want to learn as much from it as possible, and I wanted room for mistakes.
It was meant to be that way for the team, too. I wanted them to get as much from the project as possible. If I instead shot some adaptation of an older work, it would be too resolved. It would be more about my vision than about learning, particularly since the resources and team were mostly familiar to each other. It was working with a method, a setting, and people that have all worked together before, so the growth had to be in the story.
It some sense, Delta Phi is also a litmus test for my future in metafiction. I’m trying to see what I can make of this; trying to find out whether I can make this work for others as well as it works for me in my own mind.
I’m putting on the final touches of the edit this week, and after that I’ll finally have the opportunity to show the finished product to some family and friends. It makes me terribly nervous. Writing a novel doesn’t garner nearly as much attention. I suppose it is easier to write a bad book than to make a bad film. Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better.
So yeah, I’m nervous. Sharing takes just as much practice as making.
Top 5 Metafictive Shows on Netflix
The Office
This show is not only a classic example of metafiction, it also has a lot of the nuanced metafictive devices that have grown in popularity since it’s release. No gimmicks here. The story is full of compelling transformations and conflicts. Watch for the nuanced variation in characters’ awareness of structure; one character goes so far as declaring to another: “you’re not real, man!” While others ignore the camera most (if not all) of the time.
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Yes, this literary adaptation is overtly metafictive. The narrator, Lemony Snicket, doubles as a character in the story, though he doesn’t participate as such (yet)! It’s especially exciting to see what this show does with chronotopes. Sometimes Lemony is telling us the story as it’s happening, while other times he’s describing his investigation of the event long after it happened. You’ll find prime examples of cinematic misdirection in this one.
Parks and Recreation
A descendant of The Office, this show has the same kind of documentary-style interactions between the characters and the production crew. The form, however, still manages to bring up new questions. This one’s less about the producer-character relationship as it is about how the characters negotiate among themselves their position towards the audience, and like its predecessor, it’s full of diverse and inspiring personalities.
Malcolm in the Middle
If you want to learn to write, you must watch this show. It’s hilarious and brilliant. No line goes to waste. The performances are spectacular. The protagonist, Malcolm, will share an exclusive relationship with you as he can speak to the camera, though it appears that no else can. It’s a great way to characterize his intelligence, and still quite remarkable when you consider that it aired at the dawn of the new millennium.
Ouran Highschool Host Club
This hilarious animated series is conveniently self-aware when it matters most. It not only pokes fun at itself, but at its own fans, representing them through a hyperbolic character named Renge who acts as the self-proclaimed “manager” of the main cast, making plans for their plot lines and interactions. The characterization is strong, sweet, and the story has a nice tight arc that stretches just over two dozen episodes where most in this genre are of epic length. This gives it a succinct quality that is both charming and effective.