Filmmaking in Progress

A week late...

Last year, for Halloween, I published a post that highlighted a holiday video produced by my friend Collin Mapp, celebrating the festive moment, titled Holiday Dreams.

This year, he was kind enough to give me a personal heads up about a new video he produced for the season. Though the Hallowed Eve has passed, I wanted to write a few notes about the piece, a film that lives far outside of the bounds of Jack O' Lantern time.

First off, the piece demonstrates an auteur that has moved through several periods, arriving now to an all the more mature and self-aware point. His early videos were divided into either self-starring musical vignettes featuring his own antics as Zantar--green shorts and lovesick--, or a kind of stop-action animation clips that brought toys and figurines to life to the beat of favorite tunes. "Amore Morto" takes Mapp's filmmaking to the next level by combining his two signature devices into one piece, where we have both the singing stop-action animated pumpkins as well as his own polished performance as the silly in love, Dean Martin character.

Collin's achievement in direction is added to by the increase in production value, in acting polish, and, most importantly, in conceptual complication. Simply put, he's using a better camera and the lip sync matches up better than ever before. Mapp becomes Dead Dean thanks to his smart costuming and his close imitation of the Dino swagger. The camera takes time to explore the depth of Mapp's portrayal of the icon: we are given framed shots of his expressions, moving past the more jerky movements of earlier Zantar films.

As for the supporting actor's performance, I will say this: the scream was effective story telling. What in the film's absence of speaking sound could have easily devolved into fluff on one hand or histrionics on the other, was a precise representation of the emotions that moved the moment forward.

Finally, I want to say a few things about the conceptual disparity that the film builds between archetypal lover's walk in the late afternoon shimmering sun, as highlighted by the cinematography and sound design, and the fear, discomfiture, and doom promised by zombies and death. This disparity is represented in the paradoxical emotions of the two characters: her mortal fear and his love-blind gaiety. Of all of the devices implemented in the film--the acting, the cinematography, the direction, the mixing of past motifs--the construction of the thematic paradox is the one that works the best, makes the film, stamps it with maturity and promise. Yet, this device is only achieved on the shoulders of the rest. It is the clean construction of this paradox that seals the success of the film's ironic ending: of course she dies and of course she slaps him. "What a Dean Martin moment," we laugh.

If there is a holiday tradition I am looking forward to enshrining more and more in my life as the years progress, besides eating North Carolina pulled pork, a regular pig pickin' for Wedding receptions, it's watching Collin's videos when it's time to make the heart cheery.