Lost in Expression

Have you ever had one of those days where you felt so much pressure on you that you were about to crack but had to muster every ounce of strength to not show your pain to the world? Likewise, the hearty substance of Lost in Expression lies within our voyage with Jace as we witness him slowly break apart as he struggles to fortify himself away from his emotions. Everyone has emotions, yet either out of fear of appearing weak or side effects of dark memories of our past we try to hide certain emotions from the world, and eventually are stuck to deal with the explosion of built-up emotion.

From a production perspective, this film is important to me because this Honors Senior Thesis film seeks to challenge both the popularized conceptions and stereotypes placed upon the gay, ethnic, and gendered minorities represented in film and the limitation of roles available for minority actors during the casting process. The diverse characters in this film are written with the intention of avoiding stereotypes and focusing on the characters’ experiences. For example, Jace, is the stoic president of a popular fraternity on campus, a position and personality that one may not associate with a gay character; or Michelle, who is the foxy and curvy love interest to Miles, contrasting the tendency in film to cast women of smaller stature as the romantic love interests. By producing a film that was cast with equal opportunity to all actors and written without a generalization of minority groups, we hope to influence future filmmakers to do the same.