Episode #2 - Director, Animator, and Actor Steve Girard was the appointed contributor. To watch more of Steve's films check out his Vimeo page entitled “steveeatsworms.”
Our screening took place in Bushwick at Fourwind Films’ headquarters where for the first film, Steve presented an unreleased short by Director Lisa Bass that he played a minor part in. Steve brought Lisa to the event and we discussed her film.
For the second film, Steve presented the 2013 Canadian road trip animation feature Asphalt Watches by Directors Shayne Ehman and Seth Scriver. During this film, we had hamburgers and drank beer and whiskey.
Host, Editor, & Mixer - Justin Joseph Hall.
Steve Girard - Actor/Director/Animator, photo by Justin Joseph Hall
Transcript:
00;00;00;10 - 00;00;27;27
Justin Joseph Hall:
I am Justin Joseph Hall. This is Feature & a short, a monthly screening hosted by Fourwind Films, where an appointed contributor presents their chosen feature motion picture and short movie. There is only one condition for screening. The presenter must have been directly involved with one picture, but not the other. Our second host is Steve Girard.
We love Steve’s films because they are usually weird or disturbing and have unique animation and claymation incorporated into them. Steve chose two films. His first was a short by Lisa Bass. Because the film is unreleased, we're unable to say the title. Hopefully in the future you'll have fun searching online, trying to figure out which film we're talking about. Lucky for us, he brought Lisa in to discuss the film with us.
00;00;54;12 - 00;01;08;29
Steve Girard:
I know we can't talk about the title, but what does it mean? It's like the whole thing is there's a physical diseasy kind of a vibe, but it's also that feels like that diseasiness is a metaphor for feeling like you're falling apart.
Lisa Bass:
Exactly.
Steve Girard:
Old, older woman.
Like, old lady.
Steve Girard:
A hag.
Lisa Bass:
like a witch
Steve Girard:
Yeah.
Lisa Bass:
or like a powerful woman who’s past her prime.
00;01;17;06 - 00;01;17;23
Steve Girard:
Right.
00;01;17;26 - 00;01;36;02
Lisa Bass:
The pun is sort of on, like, the insecurity of being a woman in power and how you're perceived as you take charge of your own vision. I feel like when you're a teenager, whatever, you pop a zit and it’s never as bad to anybody else as it is to you, but to you it’s like the most disfiguring, horrible trauma.
And you think that everybody’s just looking at that rather than you. In the movie, nobody's giving her actual bad feedback. There's no actual external feedback saying, like, that you suck and you shouldn't do it. It's all internal.
00;01;49;11 - 00;01;50;07
Steve Girard:
Right, and she’s taking it that way.
00;01;50;14 - 00;02;20;15
Lisa Bass:
And obviously I relate. It was inspired by a John Berger, Berger quote. Berger, Berger, I don't know. He wrote Ways of Seeing, which is this, like, really really great book about art and perception and gender and power dynamics. Okay, so the quote: “A woman must continually watch herself. She's almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. While she's walking across the room or while she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisag, envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she's been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.” That's sort of the whole big concept behind this is basically about the way that women are sort of inculcated into watching themselves all the time.
That idea is something that I thought about a lot because I’ve always thought of myself as an artist. I did visual art and animation, which is sort of how we know each other, Steve. But there was a whole gap in my creative output, and I made a short couple years ago that Steve also worked on that was, like, really cute, called Here.
00;02;57;26 - 00;02;59;10
Justin Joseph Hall:
How many films have you done so far?
00;02;59;11 - 00;03;16;16
Lisa Bass:
This is my second, like, big short film that I had a bunch of people working on, but I did a bunch of projects alone in college, and I had like a music video in between these two. I, like, had a very specific music sound that I wanted. And I knew that this piece wouldn't work if I didn't have the proper score.
So I was really looking for like a Jon Brian, Punch-Drunk Love soundtrack vibe to sort of, like, drive the anxiety and the inner life of the main character. And so I told him that, and then he made all this, like, really pretty music over the top. And I was like, out, get out! And so we just, like, took all the nice music he did on top and just left the, like, weird stings and percussive, stressy things. Yeah.
00;03;43;23 - 00;03;45;08
Audience:
Is it one, like, long piece?
00;03;45;08 - 00;03;51;07
Lisa Bass:
Yeah. Yeah. He's just like an insanely talented guy. His name's Max Vernon.
00;03;51;09 - 00;03;54;13
Audience:
But he made all this music. And then you said, take out everything except the prom?
00;03;54;13 - 00;03;55;09
Lisa Bass:
Kind of.
00;03;55;12 - 00;03;55;27
Audience:
How did you feel about that?
00;03;55;27 - 00;04;11;02
Lisa Bass:
Oh, he was really great about it. He was just like, he likes the way it came out. He’s, he's a musical theater guy. So his stuff is, like, really, like, there's a lot going on in his music generally. So it was a good collaboration.
00;04;11;04 - 00;04;12;23
Steve Girard:
You all, go way back, right? To like high school?
00;04;12;23 - 00;04;22;22
Lisa Bass:
Yeah, I've known this guy since high school. So started, we went to 10th grade together and then in college and everything. He just did this, it was a K-pop musical that was really good.
Marcellus Hall:
I saw that.
Lisa Bass:
You saw it?
Marcellus Hall:
Yeah…
Lisa Bass:
Yeah, yeah.
Marcellus Hall:
Yeah.
Lisa Bass:
So he did the music.
00;04;27;13 - 00;04;30;17
Steve Girard:
Is this about making movies for you or about making anything or?
00;04;30;17 - 00;04;53;21
Lisa Bass:
I made a music video like a year ago that the musician still hasn't released. And I was, like, waiting to have something come out, and I was going nuts. And so this summer, I was like, I got to do something, and I wrote this. And it sort of, for me, is about, like, the anxiety of make, being an artist, the anxiety of trying to put yourself out there, but also the anxiety of being a woman and a woman in charge. And then, but the process of getting this off the ground and getting it made was incredibly stressful.
Audience:
What was your budget?
Lisa Bass:
Like as little as I could possibly do. I think it ended up being 6000 in the end, which is a huge amount of money for me and I just, like, self-financed.
Steve Girard:
Right.
Lisa Bass:
Insurance was, like, pretty much like the whole budget. And then.
Uta Seibicke:
What did you have to insure?
Lisa Bass:
Just the gear. We had a bunch of really nice lenses and I thought, like, and I also, this, the location was my office, it was the Magnolia office. So if like, God forbid, something like caught on fire, I just like, I can't, I just couldn't in good conscience not insure even though there's nothing that fancy about the shoot, a third of the budget.
00;05;40;18 - 00;05;48;06
Audience:
And did you do the editing?
Lisa Bass:
I did the editing as well.
Audience:
How long did it take?
Lisa Bass:
To edit? I did, I turned it around about a month.
00;05;48;08 - 00;05;54;29
Justin Joseph Hall:
The second film Steve presented was a Canadian animation called Asphalt Watches.
00;05;55;02 - 00;06;17;06
Steve Girard:
Yeah, I think it's good. I, I've had my eye on, but it's an animated movie and it looks very, like, bizarre. It’s by this group of people and one of them is this woman, Amy Lockhart, who I'm a fan of, and it's like this strange cartoon style. She's a Canadian artist and her boyfriend, Mark Bell, because he’s just he's like, kind of like Phillip Bussan, in like figures and curtains. But this is a lot of that kind of a vibe, and that's all I really know. It came out in 2014.
Audience:
Oh my God.
00;06;23;29 - 00;06;28;13
Justin Joseph Hall:
During this second film, we served hamburgers.
Audience:
(laughter)
Lisa Bass:
Well there are burgers throughout the whole thing.
Audience:
Yeah.
Audience:
That is true.
00;06;32;05 - 00;06;33;10
Andrea Hintermaier:
Wasn’t that on purpose?
00;06;35;05 - 00;06;44;04
Justin Joseph Hall:
We had available beers and a bottle of green whiskey. Steve and Lisa had a short conversation about the film afterwards.
Audience:
I enjoyed it, this peaceful creepiness.
Steve Girard:
Peaceful creepiness, yeah. It's just really well timed, I think.
Lisa Bass:
Yeah.
Steve Girard:
But some parts, there’s, there's a few parts where it was like.
Lisa Bass:
How little motion you need to make things dynamic. That was great though, Steve.
Justin Joseph Hall:
If you'd like to check out Steve's films, one of the most admired is Wawd Ahp that you can find just by googling w-a-w-d (space) a-h-p. Steve is coming out with a new film. The working title is Floaters. You want to find us and contact us through social media @fourwindfilms, f-o-u-r-w-i-n-d-f-i-l-m-s. Thank you very much. Feature & a short, filmmakers present, watch and discuss films.