4) Requiem for a Dump

TITLE: Requiem for a Dump
STATUS/DATE: 2004
GENRE: Comedy with Music
APPROX LENGTH: Approx. 12 min
LOCATION: Produced and Filmed in Columbia, South Carolina

WHAT IS:
A journey into the life of a man that suffers constipation, yet gets mournful of the loss of his exorcised fecal demon. The plot thickens with lack of toilet paper. Lets not split heirs here this is pretty much what potty comedy was made for. Claustrophobic camera angles and lovingly mock –avante garde film making in black in white to Mozart’s requiem is sure to appeal to at least someone. Ok you got me: it was a good way to make good use of ridiculous gags (no pun intended). Requiem was an interpretive dance about poo  created with a love of Mozart a USC college friend of mine and I shared; along with  a bizarre sense of humor for love of the mental images that music produces.

PRODUCTION:
No this was not where I picked up the name Uddershiet films, despite popular conjecture. Production was fairly simple. The idea sprung from a photography project where you had to maintain a narrative within 10 frames or shots. It grew into an experiment with editing to music and experimenting with various camera angles. It was my first implementation and understanding of the practical uses of  a wide angle lens (it was convenient to have a camera store nearby). The end result was a way that I could make a few dollars in the underground comedy college video market. I mean I pretty much proved that I could get people to pay me money for a short film about using the bathroom for 15 min. There is a lot to say there; if I could market that, was there anything that I couldn't market?

Requiem was filmed with a typical off the shelf analog camera and footage converted to digital and edited frame by frame to sync up with the music cues. It was at this time it was found out how important editing was in a production even as silly as this one. Cuts, fades, and movement in frame were pulled together and matched to parts of the music. Editing is a syntax, much like making a sentence from words.  If you make the sentence incomplete, rearrange the words out of order,add words where they shouldn't be, or omit words or punctuation the message may not be conveyed very well or at worse not at all (*site the text in this website as a possible example-said tongue in cheek).

One of the hard lessons to learn that comes with experience is continuity. Most of small productions people often double or triple up on jobs but it is a very wise idea to put someone in charge of  being script supervisor to maintain continuity. The small list that follows is a list of my very own goof and or gaffes:

1) light switches change position from on to off to on again.
2) lighting rig can be seen in the corner of an open door way
3) cut from knelling to squatting and back to kneeling again

Many of these mistakes are very simple, and one must remember that even in films with inflated multi-million dollar budgets, mistakes happen such as a person having a scar in one shot then not having one in another; or a shirt changing from being unbuttoned to buttoned and back to unbuttoned back again. For the most part it can distract the audience and quickly pull them out of the immersive world that you are trying to create.
 
One important note here is that there was shelf just above my head in the background contained various soaps, shampoos, and bathroom oriented items. rather than design a new label for each of these products, its often simpler just to turn the in an angle where the names and brands cannot not be seen. this is a simple thing, but can save you time and money, and legal hassle in the long run.

My friend at the time that worked on this with me was Matt Owen, and at the time he was playing keyboard for a band that sounded sounded like they were from another planet called " The Fastest Stead on Earth". We had a fun time in my apartment / studio learning television theme songs and roots of famous riffs, and laughing about the camp value. We made a game where he would play a theme song with a slight variance and I would have to guess where it came from. In the end we recorded a varient of the TV show "The Jeffersons" theme song where I sang in a warbling pseudo-Elvis like banter with some nonsense inaubible lryics. We ended up using this in the end for the music as the credits roll.

 PACKAGING AND MARKETING:  I typically like to experiment with the process as a whole and try to make every feature totally unique. In the case of "Requiem of a Dump" the DVD disc label itself was in the shape of a toilet paper roll complete with a folded 2 ply insert of generic (real) toilet paper clipped to the inside.

 Many people remark about how they find the open ended  interpretation amusing; am I crying because I lost the poo? or am I crying because nothing came out?

Upon being connected with the love of  my life and her dear son with autism, we were discussing various potty training methods one day and a light bulb went on. I ran up stairs tore through the closet and produced "Requiem of a Dump". Her son watched it non stop for about a month and insisted (after the confusion of what I was doing on a DVD) that I act out every little detail to which I obliged, and tried to get him to do the same as well. I eventually got him a crown similar to the one in the video.

The special needs aides that came to our house had to be subjected to him watching it several times a night. Upon discussing this in his physical therapy one day the therapist remarked on how sweet it was that I made him a potty video. My loving woman said " no .. no.. he made this years before we got together" to which the tone of the therapist changed and replied " oh....(long pause) .. I see.... he must... be ...  creative".

QUOTES:
“most dramatic dump ever taken...”- Matt Chellini

 

Requiem DVD Cover	Abyss	Gut Pain	Deus Ex Machina
Remote Angle	The Run	Stunt Underwear	Tear
The Can	Tube	The Wipe