Tragedies for Children of All Ages

Description

The first short film in a planned trilogy entitled Tragedies for Children of All Ages. Styled after the fairytales of old like Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. The story focuses around a nameless girl in a destitute mining town who discovers one day that her tears turn into diamonds.

Camera

Red One

Runtime

22:47

Credits

Girl: Tory Freeth
Boy: Camden Palmisano
Father: Charles Mosby
Crone: Lucy F. Kihm
Narrator: Mick Lauer

Director & Writer: Alex Lee
Art & VFX Sup: Arvin Bautista
DP: Angie Hill
PD: David Hong

Development Diary

This was my debut short film. I had a very clear vision in my mind of the film's aesthetic while writing it, and a clear idea of how to execute it. The biggest challenge was communicating the vision of the film to my crew. When I made this back in 2007, there wasn't anything exactly like it that I could use as reference material. Putting together the look book was difficult as I didn't have any skills in illustration myself and I had to communicate the vision to both my illustrator and DP and the actors. I ended up sending my illustrator to a play that captured the aesthetic, and it required a lot of back and forth. This was before a lot of previsualization tools existed and I was still inexperienced in communicating ideas as well as lacking in a lot of the vocabulary I needed.

One of my biggest mistakes was rushing. Because I was bankrolling this film personally, I often had my producer/AD hat on when I really should have had my director hat on and insisted on taking my time.

I also was an inexperienced writer, and mishandled the pacing. I struggled with killing my babies, and the film ended up getting saddled with some bloat in retrospect.

Lessons learned:
Avoid producing and directing. No man can serve two masters -- especially demanding masters like The Story and The Budget.