The Blue Room

I aspire my work to be an imprint of films I have seen and the filmmakers that influence me, who put images and ideas into my head. My previous film, Pauline, was an imprint of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's work. The Blue Room, I would have to say, is an influence from Michael Haneke’s work. With this film, I wanted to play with tricking the viewer; manipulating what they perceive and what cannot be seen on screen. Haneke has an incredible ability to see the judgments and beliefs made by the audience with very limited perception of the characters we are watching and flip those ideas extremely quickly. I wanted experiment with shocking imagery and surprise elements that Haneke uses with precision, while also experimenting with gender perceptions and female characters in film. This character I have created is, in all simplified arguments, an extreme. But, I hoped to make her, although extreme, a real human woman. She is a real person, with emotions, close relationships, compassion, but yet also violence and aggression, just like any other human with an affective personality. With those goals for my character, I wanted to use those perceptions made by the audience that coincide with the “female” qualities of her personality, to help with the surprise element towards the middle of the film. I closely analyzed the narrative beats of the script as well, to give me an idea of the shooting style. The beats helped pair the moment of surprise and dramatic actions with drastic camera changes and positions, as well as switching the 180 degree line.