The Lottery & Other Adaptations

This was the first assignment for my "Directing New Narratives" class. The assignment was to take an existing short story, poem, or song lyrics, and make a film adaptation of the stories events that portrays it in a new light. This was a group assignment, and I had the pleasure of working closely with two friends that I had in the class, Robbie Palmer and Kelsey Rupe. Each of use were set to be the directors of our own short - each of us making our own adaptation. From there, we were able to help each other with different aspects of each project. After talking together about what we should adapt, we came to the consensus of the short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.

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For my version of The Lottery, I decided to stay more true to the core of the story. I wanted to use the characters and personas that Jackson created and play with them in their own way. One of the things that I love adding in my work is an emphasis on the characters emotions and looking deeper into the aftermath of certain actions. From this, my story followed one of the children in the story, Davy Hutchinson. As his mother is the one to be stoned to death in the original story, I wanted to make something based on his reflection years later about the events that took place. Jumping back and forth between the past and present in a ambiguous way with the presence of his mother looking over him, I wanted to really play with the pain in loss that came from this.

For my story, I was the director, script writer, location scouter, and casting director. We had two days of shooting, both unfortunately being quite chilly as it was early February in Buffalo, NY. Kelsey joined on the first shooting day and was in charge of camera angles and recording. She also manned the sound equipment. On the second day, we were joined by Robbie who wanted to see how everything was going. Everyone maintained the same roles, however Robbie took over running sound for Kelsey. After shooting, the footage was passed to Robbie for editing, and I made final touch-ups for the submission.

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For Robbie's version, he took a drastically different approach to the narrative. Robbie's background is rooted in horror tropes and the darkness that comes from it. He took his adaptation in a demonic horror route. Following the story of a "frat party" gone wrong, one guy is lured into a "lucky night" with someone at the party. As he is a massive douche, his name is rigged to be the one "randomly" chosen from the lottery as the girls around him start to take their revenge.

I was the primary camera operator in this project, and was in charge of the composition for many of the shots. I love adding in fun angles and fluid camera movement in my work, and this project gave me the opportunity to do so. Robbie's vision was to emphasize the voyeurism of a lot of older films, shaming the audience for taking an over-sexualization of the female figure. A lot of what I focused on was the background placement of objects as well. Keeping continuity between props, shots, and actor positions is something I want to make easy between editing cuts, so the planning behind all that was my responsibility. As well, I was in charge of lighting, so placing lights in certain spots and adjusting color temperature to fit the vibe of the set was under my influence. Making the space feel bigger than a frat house living room was a little bit of a challenge that required moving a lot of furniture and the lighting around to widen the space between takes. After the shoot, while not editing, I was in change of the color correction and color design for the exported version. 

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For Kelsey's version, she went in a more comedic route. Following the story of three band mates who play together, they find that one member is playing with another band. After confronting that member and he pleads his case, they leave it up to chance to see if he stays or if he goes. 

I did not have as much involvement in this part of the project as I did the others. Kelsey put me on the role of editor. Under her guidance and with her assistance, we came to an agreement on what her vision was. This short ended up being made in less than 72 hours with the constraint in time that we had to make all three of these. While we worked together, it was her input that made the most effect in the final cut. Unfortunately a scene of the rival band playing was cut from the final film. Afterwards, Kelsey threw on the effects and color correction herself.