Soliloquy
Loosely inspired by the creator’s own confrontations with mental illness, the film follows a young boy caught in the midst of a psychotic break as we witness him struggle to discern his internal hallucinatory world from that of objective reality; and, while following him as he descends through a seemingly endless labyrinth of equally terrifying and fantastical hallucinations, the piece attempts to glimpse into the fabric of a mind haunted by insanity—one in which the boundaries of reality itself have become ambiguous. From surrealist mountain vistas to psychedelic fractals to an abandoned spaceship floating amidst the cosmos, the character is transported further and further into the haunted recesses of his twisted psyche-plane, and, ultimately, is forced to make a choice—between the will to power and the will to death.
In this way, the project attempts to make the essential invisibility of mental illness visible (and relatable) to the average, neurotypical viewer; and, in creating this empathetic link between the sane and the insane, it strives to restructure, humanize, and normalize the social taboos surrounding mental illness itself—while also exploring the phenomenological nature of life, death, dreams, and the essential ontological incompatibility between a ‘split mind’ and the social impositions of its collective reality.
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Oliver GrayDirector
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Oliver GrayWriter
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Oliver GrayProducer
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Oliver GrayKey Cast
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Project Type:Animation, Experimental, Short, Student, Web / New Media
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Genres:Drama, Animation, Thriller, 3D
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Runtime:5 minutes
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Completion Date:June 20, 2020
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Production Budget:300 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:Digital, CGI, 3D
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:Yes
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Student Project:Yes
Digital artist, film-maker, and recent graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts' Class of 2020, where I studied 3D animation and multi-media production.
I produced, directed, and edited this film as part of my thesis project at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (Class of 2020), and spent my junior and senior years working on the project. I was the only person who worked on the project—from start to finish—so the film was quite literally an exercise in technical experimentation. I modeled, animated, lit, and textured everything on Maya (using both Arnold and Redshift as renderers); then, I composited and edited the individual shots into a cohesive narrative using After Effects; and, finally, I brought everything into Premiere, where I composed the soundtrack and did some basic color-correction.
The film was loosely inspired by my own comprehension of (and various experiences with) mental illness, so it was definitely a very personal project. My main goal with the film (via its ‘glimpse into the fabric of a mind haunted by insanity’) was to make the ‘essential invisibility’ of mental illness visible (and relatable) to the average, neurotypical viewer—primarily as a means of forming an empathetic link between the insane (filmic character) and sane (viewer)—with the ultimate goal being the construction of a narrative whose very consumption subconsciously functioned as a means of humanizing and normalizing the social taboos surrounding mental illness itself.