{"id":147,"date":"2017-04-27T11:35:39","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T18:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/?p=147"},"modified":"2017-04-28T00:31:18","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T07:31:18","slug":"softcore-by-tess-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/softcore-by-tess-paul\/","title":{"rendered":"Softcore by Tess Paul."},"content":{"rendered":"
Tess Paul – Softcore<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
By: Camille Mousseau<\/strong><\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Among the many film production students premiering their shorts this year at the annual Persistance of Vision Festival is Tess Paul, a fourth year hoping to finish her last year at UBC with something truly special. I sat down with Tess for this interview less than a week away from POV\u2019s opening night, she had just screened her film, Softcore, in Freddy Wood and was still stressed about sound <\/span><\/span>mixing complications. Needless to say life as a student filmmaker is a bit stressful. Tess and I talk about Softcore, a coming-of-age film Tess describes as, \u201ca story about a young girl named <\/span><\/span>Imogen (Ellen MacNevin) who has a fight with her mom and runs away form her very privileged life\u2026 and falls in with a group of girls who she thinks are really cool\u2026 and discovers the dark underbelly of East Vancouver, kind of that cool girl world.\u201d But this film isn\u2019t only about discovering life on the other side of the tracks, or falling into the wrong crowd, Tess emphasizes the theme of \u201cacceptance\u201d in this work, as Imogen, at sixteen, realizes \u201chow vapid her life is\u201d, and her experience \u201ctrying to find meaning in other people and ultimately failing in the end.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The film\u2019s three main characters Imogen, Lux (Caitlin Davidson), and Maggie (Stephanie Horak) can be seen as facets of her own life says Tess. \u201cImogen is me at sixteen, not really knowing what\u2019s up, and Lux is my party phase, which still probably isn\u2019t over\u2026and Maggie is the serious, but still in her party phase, late twenties version of myself that I expect to be.\u201d The three together form a complete narrative arc. But these characters aren\u2019t just about her, \u201cI hope everyone can sympathize with [Imogen] at least a little bit, because when we are young, whether you\u2019re a guy a girl, it\u2019s pretty reminiscent of a time you wanted to belong, to be accepted.\u201d Tess can\u2019t praise her actresses enough; she smiles a lot talking about this topic. \u201cThey all just clicked perfectly\u2026 Ellen\u2019s face looks so good on screen, she really fit what I was imagining.\u201d Ellen is an up and coming actress in Vancouver, and was just selected as one of fifteen applicants in a local women in film mentorship program.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 UBC POV films are given two shooting days, a challenge for students who aim to make longer pieces. Softcore\u2019s twelve-minute story spans an entire night, evening to dawn, adding the <\/span><\/span>added difficulty of shooting outside at night. The film is encased in a grunge aesthetic, bathed in greens and yellows. Tess started out with a list of her directorial inspirations starting out the film. She cites Michael Haneke as influence for her opening shot, \u201ca static oner, we ended up putting adigital zoom on\u2026. kind of an homage to him.\u201d It\u2019s also filled with Harmony Korine-esqu jumpcuts, think Spring Breakers. And of course, Sofia Coppola, Tess\u2019 \u201cmain girl,\u201d who motivated a <\/span><\/span>lot of the film\u2019s dreamy aspects, particularly the end montage. And finally, \u201cI hadn\u2019t seen American Honey yet, but when I did I thought \u2018this is exactly what I\u2019m going for.\u2019\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When asked about what was challenging about making Softcore Tess laughs about the <\/span><\/span>time crunch, and more normal stresses of student film-making. One key scene was written on the fly on set, \u201cone of my actors came to me, with an idea to expand a scene, and we were in the middle of shooting\u2026 I was in such a collaborative mode with my actors, they were all really amazing, so I was open to it. It ended up being one of favorite scenes in the film. It\u2019s a bathroom scene between Imogen and Lux, a really tender moment\u2026 It\u2019s the scene that sums up everything the best, and it\u2019s the one I wrote on the fly on the day. It\u2019s really cool how that happened.\u201d We both have a good laugh about how so many films have revealing and heartfelt scenes in bathrooms. \u201cIt\u2019s very cliche of Girls, <\/span>in every episode of Girls <\/span>there\u2019s a bathroom scene. I love bathroom scenes. If I\u2019m making a film this year, it\u2019s having a bathroom scene.\u201d There\u2019s actually a few bathroom scenes in Softcore, one in a public bathroom shot in Strathcona Park in East Van. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She kept the crew small, only ten of her fellow film-production students, \u201cthat\u2019s the way I like working, I hate managing thirty people\u2026It was just such a dream to have everyone on set, just working on my film. I was just amazed.\u201d The sets were minimal. There were \u201ca lot of restrictions for shooting outside,\u201d and much of the film takes place in Tess\u2019s own apartment. Local musician Patrick Fiore\u00a0volunteered to score the film. \u201cI\u2019m really lucky to have an amazing score for this film\u2026 It really sounds like my <\/span>film, with reminiscence of that twitchy-pop thing I had in mind when I was writing it\u2026 it\u2019s very neo-noir with a lot of evo guitar.\u201d You can catch more collaboration between Tess and Patrick Fiore\u00a0soon, she\u2019s set to direct a music video of his this summer. After she graduates, Tess plans to \u201cstay in Vancouver and pursue writing\u2026 short fiction is what I would like to do. Take a break from film for a second, and probably do a project this summer. A small independent project\u2026 a little mumble-core movie, that\u2019s in pre-production right now.\u201d She also does film reviews for the magazine BeatRoute. <\/span>To finish off our interview I wanted to know what films Tess was looking forward to at POV. \u201cI\u2019m really excited to see Devil on Frog Mountain, and <\/span>Unravel, and <\/span>Violet and June,\u201d <\/span><\/span>these are all third year films. Tess has already seen all the fourth year films, and helped on the set of a few of them, \u201cthose are done by some of my friends, and I just know they\u2019re going to do a good job. [I\u2019m] excited to see those up on the big screen for sure,\u201d and I\u2019m sure many of us can say the same for her. Catch Softcore on April 29th and 30th at the Freddie Wood theater. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tess Paul – Softcore By: Camille Mousseau \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Among the many film production students premiering their shorts this year at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ubcufsa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}