Surrealist movie

Surrealist film edited in adobe premier for surrealism and media class.

Because dreams are personal, it can be tough to portray them in a given film without distorting or ruining the images within the dreams. The best that the producer can hope for is to recreate to the best of their ability the dreams' situations and scenarios. “Local Diaries”  is a short film featuring a compilation of three dreams with different symbols complemented by a hand picked music track.

Small bits of three separate dreams of “Local Diaries” were chosen from my Surrealist Dream Diary and then were filmed and edited to create a story plot. Dropping a game winning touchdown was very vivid in my dream and is shown repeatedly throughout the short film. Struggling to play an Xbox game was certainly a central motif in another dream. And traveling to different football games with different people also came about in a few of my dreams. I tried to take bits and pieces from these specified dreams and create a story out of them, rather than try to exactly recreate just one of the dreams.

A major symbol of my film is the use of color and when it is used. Throughout the story, the main character is trying to succeed in life, but often he can’t. He goes to football games and sees great athletes excelling, but cannot be as good as them. He plays Xbox, but cannot even succeed at that. He does not have friends as he is portrayed always alone. The main character is not shown in color in this film until a turning point in his life and is shown with other people (his friends).

Two more symbols are the fish and the hampster. The fish represents the main character at the low point in his life. He has no friends, his football career is looking bleak, his fish dies and the fish somewhat recommends him dying, until there is a transition. The main character and all of his friends are shown in quick succession (in color) and then the pet hamster is shown. This represents that the main character has been reborn and put his past behind him. He has a new pet, he now has friends, and his football career finally takes off as he is shown walking in the players tunnel and a celebratory touchdown spike.

The setting of this film I feel definitely adds to the plot of this movie. The film was shot in Maryland, Massachusetts, California, and South Carolina, contributing to the somewhat sporadic nature of the film. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to film the shot from the players tunnel and at some of the big time games which created a strong parallel to the big leagues (where the character aspired to be) and where he actually was (playing alone in an open field).

I felt like the music added a strong surrealist touch with the woman’s voice on the track, and the song provided an uptempo beat which went along with the main character eventually reaching his goals.

Although they are sometimes difficult to portray in cinema, dreams are a very important and interesting part of human being. It would be impossible to show and exactly relate all of the dreams in the dream diary, but “Local Diaries” takes bits and pieces from a few of the dreams to create what I think is an interesting storyline.