Why Film
By Audrey Larson (January 2016)
I was four years old when I first saw the movie Yours, Mine, and Ours (1962). Lucille Ball plays a widow with eight kids who marries a widower (Henry Fonda) with ten. This funny movie may not be a classic, but it marked the beginning of my fascination with familial bonds. I’ve watched it dozens of times. I gravitate to family stories: The Sound of Music, Annie, Home Alone, Father of the Bride. As I became aware of the flaws and quirkiness within my own family, I began exploring more complex and dysfunctional families portrayed on the screen: Little Miss Sunshine, Silver Linings Playbook, Boyhood, Beasts of the Southern Wild. In the midst of the familial craziness there exists a raw love that transcends differences and binds them together. One of my favorite scenes is the fast-paced introduction to the Hoover family in Little Miss Sunshine. The eccentricities of each family member are expertly revealed through the everyday motions of coming home from work, setting up dinner, etc. These characters aren’t caricatures, or personality types—they are layered as people are in real life: flawed, complex, unique, a bit ironic. Through back-and-forth exchanges amongst family members, we get a glimpse into not only the characters’ personalities, but the expansive world that exists outside the present scene.
These pure, spontaneous moments within families captivate me. There’s a certain freedom to be ourselves, a certain vulnerability that is exposed. I want to explore these bonds through film, to capture imperfect family moments, big and small, snapshots strung together to form the story of who we are and who we love, creating a unique, jagged whole.
I always knew I was a storyteller, but it wasn’t until I found a passion for film that my voice began to emerge. In my mind, life is a hyper-visual series of scenes and camera shots. I discovered a freedom in expressing stories as I had envisioned them. “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” Henry David Thoreau said. This miracle happens when I watch a powerful film, documentary, or even a television commercial. I temporarily step out of my body and dive into someone else’s head; I explore the world through their eyes.
But as much as film can explore how different we are from each other, its power comes from the idea that we are fundamentally the same. In Blake Snyder's cult screenwriting book, Save the Cat, he relates that a good movie must be "primal". It should appeal to our most basic human needs or challenges: love, hate, power, envy, survival, kinship, fear. In other words; the challenges we've struggled with for thousands of years. The films I love make me feel. My goal is that my visual stories will make someone else laugh, cry, empathize, or simply feel less alone. Movies can be whatever we want them to be— an escape, an adventure, an awakening. It’s really quite extraordinary.
I was four years old when I first saw the movie Yours, Mine, and Ours (1962). Lucille Ball plays a widow with eight kids who marries a widower (Henry Fonda) with ten. This funny movie may not be a classic, but it marked the beginning of my fascination with familial bonds. I’ve watched it dozens of times. I gravitate to family stories: The Sound of Music, Annie, Home Alone, Father of the Bride. As I became aware of the flaws and quirkiness within my own family, I began exploring more complex and dysfunctional families portrayed on the screen: Little Miss Sunshine, Silver Linings Playbook, Boyhood, Beasts of the Southern Wild. In the midst of the familial craziness there exists a raw love that transcends differences and binds them together. One of my favorite scenes is the fast-paced introduction to the Hoover family in Little Miss Sunshine. The eccentricities of each family member are expertly revealed through the everyday motions of coming home from work, setting up dinner, etc. These characters aren’t caricatures, or personality types—they are layered as people are in real life: flawed, complex, unique, a bit ironic. Through back-and-forth exchanges amongst family members, we get a glimpse into not only the characters’ personalities, but the expansive world that exists outside the present scene.
These pure, spontaneous moments within families captivate me. There’s a certain freedom to be ourselves, a certain vulnerability that is exposed. I want to explore these bonds through film, to capture imperfect family moments, big and small, snapshots strung together to form the story of who we are and who we love, creating a unique, jagged whole.
I always knew I was a storyteller, but it wasn’t until I found a passion for film that my voice began to emerge. In my mind, life is a hyper-visual series of scenes and camera shots. I discovered a freedom in expressing stories as I had envisioned them. “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” Henry David Thoreau said. This miracle happens when I watch a powerful film, documentary, or even a television commercial. I temporarily step out of my body and dive into someone else’s head; I explore the world through their eyes.
But as much as film can explore how different we are from each other, its power comes from the idea that we are fundamentally the same. In Blake Snyder's cult screenwriting book, Save the Cat, he relates that a good movie must be "primal". It should appeal to our most basic human needs or challenges: love, hate, power, envy, survival, kinship, fear. In other words; the challenges we've struggled with for thousands of years. The films I love make me feel. My goal is that my visual stories will make someone else laugh, cry, empathize, or simply feel less alone. Movies can be whatever we want them to be— an escape, an adventure, an awakening. It’s really quite extraordinary.