Vlad

Date of Shooting:	July, 6th 1989
Date of Video Editing:	July, 7th 1989
Date of Audio Editing:
Duration:	5min
Actors:	Adriana Meirelles de Paiva Meira
	Guilherme de Rossi
	Luciana Huertas Arnaez
	Patricia Guzman
	Ricardo Nori Gáudio
	Rodrigo Lemes
Sound Track:	Atmosphere (Joy Division)

A boy foresees himself in the woods, tied to a tree, almost dead, and then he meets Vlad, who will turn this foresight into reality.

There was na idea of making a film about the violent medieval tyrant Vlad (the one who inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula), who would torture his enemies in dark dungeons. This idea had not yet been developed into a plot until one day in July, when we decided to improvise a Quick Movie.

The story was created in partnership - Pedro and Guilherme - and it took no more than half na hour to be completed. It was quite exciting: one's ideas teasing the other's imagination. The result to this brainstorming was an ingenious plot.

The supernatural background here is about another dimension in time, through which one of the characters sees himself tied to a tree, almost dead. Frightened, he tries to go back to his friends, but he looses his track to them and meets Vlad, who will torture him and tie him to a tree. The same scene as before, but from a diferent stand point in time. Vlad would be some sort of reincarnation in one of the tortured character's friends.

But having a good idea is one thing, and making a good film out of it is another. This Quick Movie proves that right.

The plot was kept, as much as some details and secundary ideas, but the original visual concept was abandoned, and it was part of the story too. When it was first imagined, a lot of images were also imagined, images whose dramatic composition would contribute to the strenght of the film.With rare exceptions, no scene was shot with the originally conceived composition. We first though of using a neighbor house under construction as Vlad's castle, and then improvising some tortures there. But although the film was left to be made on the following day of the creation of the story, we didn't give it the proper preproduction. We didn't use the neighbor house as a set, and the film was shot with very poor resources.

Besides that, it was shot in such a hurry that absurd grammar errors occurred, directing errors. Basic rules - specially those concerning line-of-sight - were disobeyed. The result to that is a very confusing film. (Most of those errors might be corrected with digital editing techniques, by horizontally flipping some scenes.)

The music from Joy Division provides a proper atmosphere, although keeping the rhythm too slow.