Built from Failure: The Vivisected Earth
This film should not exist.
I started working on "The Vivisected Earth" because I had failed to make another film. That unfinished film explored a unique Los Angeles neighborhood infested with non-native peafowl. It was a mad film, a romp, but I was in a state of crisis; I was crippled by depression.
I started "The Vivisected Earth" in a panic, desperately working to create something of substance that could qualify as my Loyola Marymount thesis production. Without "The Vivisected Earth" I would have dropped out; without the film I would have given up on filmmaking altogether.
I got the germ of the film on a drive north out of the Los Angeles area. I drove on a whim, needing an escape from the city, needing an escape from the heat of Los Angeles in August, needing a reprieve from the battering drought. When I drove north, I found myself in the Bakersfield area. It was rural but it was not lush; instead, it was a sickly yellow. Dust kicked up from the empty fields, and every few miles I would see signs blaming the drought on the government.
An archival image, acquired through the Prelinger Media Archive. These found footage images, particularly images from home movies, make up the bulk of The Vivisected Earth.
I was driven to make a film based on what I saw, but I was uncomfortable with picking up a camera. One of the major reasons I stopped filming the peafowl film was a sense of crippling ineptitude, a sense that I could not make this film, that it was out of my wheelhouse as a filmmaker. I was digging myself into a project that was unfocused and unrealized. That fall, I could not pick up a camera. I still cannot. I could not bring myself to work with anyone; instead, I chose to make “The Vivisected Earth” in solitude.
Looking back on the process of filming, I cannot tie a line exactly from how the original thought turned into the final film. I knew I wanted to make something about the environment. I knew it would be found footage. I knew it would be pensive. But the primary mode by which I wanted to influence my audience was with shock. The film had to be graphic. It had to be violent, but that violence had to be working in some other mode: not the graphic nature of a traditional documentary; instead, a violence that had otherwise been wiped from our cultural memory. I knew I needed to show slaughter. I knew the film needed that.
An abstracted image of a burned evergreen tree found in the Waldo Canyon Fire burn scar.
Everything else in the film was determined by that original constraint. The man/woman dynamic. The abstracted images. The landscapes. The visions. Everything revolved around those images of slaughter.
As I try to decipher why these images were so central, I do not think it is because the film is environmental. The film’s environmental conceit is a red herring; The Vivisected Earth is about depression, and the angst that triggered my own spiral downward. I wanted to show blood because I wanted my audience to feel pain. I wanted my audience to suffer in indecision. I wanted my audience to be shaken and not know how to stand up again.
Image Processing
The Vivisected Earth employs a number of visual effects to create its ultimate final mood. This processing method involves heavy use of color correction effects and layering of images in order to abstract the image, as a means to more fully realize the emotional core of the image. This abstraction includes both the abstraction of archival and shot images, but also the layering and construction of entirely new images.
The visual effects used in The Vivisected Earth focused on abstracting brutal images which reoccur in the film. This image, taken from an archival home movie, depicts the two instances that the film uses the image. On the left is the original image and on the right the image with the abstraction.
These images provide the audience with a way to process the information they receive in a more emotionally focused way, as opposed to an entirely logical way of thinking.
An abstracted image composed of layering multiple images on top of one another.
Production History
The Vivisected Earth's production began in fall 2015, following the failed production of another MFA thesis Fair is Fowl (a documentary on the peafowl of Palos Verdes). The images collected were acquired through archive.org and the Prelinger media archive, as well as on location in Black Forest, Colorado and Castlewood Canyon, Colorado. The final film was completed in May 2016.
Festival Screenings
- Orlando Edge Film Festival - October 2016
- Caminhos Film Festival - November 2016
- Cutting Edge Film Festival - November 2016
- Bucharest Short Film Festival - May 2017
Awards
- Awareness Festival - Merit Award of Awareness: October 2016