Editorials
The Hidden Curriculum: Microaggressions and Resistance in ‘Master’ (2022)
If there’s anything more certain than the sun, it’s the irreverent notion that a person of color is not only not qualified, but they should also feel lucky to be within the spaces they reside when “allowed.” As of late, during this tumultuous election year, we’ve gotten used to (not really) the term “diversity hire”. In the 80s, it was the great disdain for Affirmative Action acts from the 60s. In the 50s, it was the civil rights movement. We’re 30 years shy of a century of oppression, adversity and undertow in academic institutions, and it permeates everything we can possibly think to be involved in, appointed to or admired for. In the 2022 film Master by Mariama Diallo, we explore cultural depth and never ending societal issues with race, microaggressions, and othering in the academic world.
Master and the Horror of Being “Allowed” in White Academic Spaces
The film opens with Gail Bishop (Regina Hall), the first Black Master of House at Ancaster University, a predominantly white collegiate atmosphere that’s almost as old as the country. She works to settle in as best she can in a home rife with pictures of old white men and cookie jars in the shape of derogatory Black effigies, but we’ll get to that later. At the same time, an eager and hopeful Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee) arrives at Ancaster. Jasmine is given her assignment, room 302, the haunted room. Oooooh!
Well, she’s not even told that it’s haunted. It’s alluded to quite haughtily by the Welcome Crew.
It’s a shame the steep spiral downward in trauma this film takes because these experiences, save for most of the supernatural pieces, are true to life. The wonder of starting new, being a part of something that sparks joy. Being the first Black anything academically is always seen as a how-did-they-get-that-couldn’t-be-because-they’ve-earned-it, and it’s a mountain on top of a mountain. For Jasmine and Gail, the hike is just beginning.
Microaggressions Disguised as Friendship
Jasmine takes to the haunted room, and realizes, quite startlingly, that she has a roommate, Amelia (Talia Ryder). Amelia and Jasmine hit it off nicely when it’s just the two of them, but when they are joined by Amelia’s more affluent, more snotty (and also white) friends Cressida (Ella Hunt) and Katie (Noa Fisher), the tables turn out of Jasmine’s favor. She’s constantly interrupted when she shares her own stories in order for them to tell their own. She is picked on, cornered, and subjected to soft-handed bullying at the hands of these girls’ possible paramours as well. It’s a common situation for any person of color in a predominantly white space. The period of adjustment takes longer because the goalposts keep changing. And the game of making you and keeping you ill-adjusted is an ongoing sport.
Now, the haunted room theory permeates Jasmine’s waning emotional and mental state as she begins to have hellish nightmares: losing time, waking up believing she’s being attacked by an entity or treated like a specimen to be studied. Jasmine uncovers the death of the first Black student who resided in that room, and from that point on, the thinly veiled and petty racist cracks become less subdued.
Academic Policing and the Presumption of Guilt
Jasmine’s struggles with belonging and the doubt of her aptitude begin externally. A valedictorian, a brilliant mind, and a bubbly personality squashed into a shell of Blackness. The Black lunch staff is all smiles with the white students but when Jasmine comes through the line, she’s treated brusquely, silently as if to say, you think you’re something special by being on that side of the aisle. It’s such a visceral scene because society has made its perpetuated caste system for so long, there’s bound to be some internal issues that folks struggle with. Sometimes it causes anger, jealousy or shame. In this scene, it’s a mix of it all and cuts deep in less than 120 seconds.
In light of being a suspect, she’s investigated when an alarm sensor goes off in the library. When it’s revealed that Jasmine has nothing belonging to the library, the urge is to check her bag. The accusatory tone of the librarian and the growing crowd behind her only adds to the humiliation. Guilty until proven innocent.
Classroom Racism and Intellectual Erasure
During a class with the only other person of color, her instructor, Dr. Liv Beckham, discussed color usage in The Scarlet Letter. Jasmine believes that using the color white so often points to Hester’s daughter Pearl’s innocence, but you can tell she wants to dive deeper than that – much deeper. When white student Cressida chimes up that the white points to white people of that time and their ignorance and disdain for color or non-conforming women. Listen.
I know many people of color who viewed this film and felt everything Jasmine’s body language was showing. For real, Cressida?! If that statement had come out of Jasmine’s mouth, would she be seen as the angry Black woman? The race card thrower? The reverse racist? Surely, and not as the wise, forward-thinking, woke, and diversity-first crown-wearer like Cressida gets to be. And there’s another rub. Don’t be too smart, don’t be too confrontational, don’t question the system.
Institutional Bias and the Myth of Meritocracy
When Jasmine confronts Liv for giving her a poor grade in class and praising the white students, Liv construes that Jasmine was from an “inner city, poor graded school, things work differently here”. Jasmine has to fight to tell her she’s not a hard knock case, she’s from the suburbs, AND she was the valedictorian, to which Liv is like oh gee wilickers I didn’t know. The casual assumptions about her intelligence and background, especially from Liv, sting, in the same ways the attitudes from the lunch crew stung. Jasmine’s experience is compounded by the ingrained and institutional barriers that exist for Black and Brown students. She’s constantly having to prove herself academically and socially, play maid and errand runner, and in a coup de grace to further distance and isolate her from her roommate, she’s made into a pawn as Amelia’s crush.
Tyler (Will Hochman) begins to flirt and make out with Jasmine in a “how scandalous is it that I’m hooking up with the Black girl” way, because that’s a scandal ‘round his parts! Extensive spiritual sigh.
She’s constantly reminded that she doesn’t belong and is some sort of bone of contention for many members of the school and faculty. It’s almost as if, even though all of our barrier-breaking, that these spaces are not designed for us to succeed, much like corporate and government spaces; the navigation of personal and racial bias has you exhausted before you even end your workday.
Gail Bishop and the Burden of Professional Respectability in Master
Gail’s situation is less nuanced and much heavier in the “you should feel incredibly lucky we’ve decided to let you do this” vibe. There is not a person of color out there in an academic, corporate, or government setting (and let’s go further, a friend group) where they didn’t feel tokenized or like a box tick. As a tenured professor, Gail Bishop represents the more mature side of this coin for Black women in academia. Despite all her successes, she’s constantly countermanded and undermined, not to mention low-key chided by her colleagues with comments like, “Should we call her Obama?”. The microaggressions are more serrated for her, especially when her all-white board – mirroring Jasmine’s all-white “friend” group – cast doubt on her professional merit and her ability to be impartial when faced with a serious situation regarding another professor of color.
She’s deemed unqualified and unsuited for the prestigious gift they’ve given her. It’s this type of structural inequity and institutional racism, not to mention gross lack of cultural awareness on the part of predominantly white institutions that create this caustic and hostile environment where stereotyping and discrimination often impact promotions, tenure opportunity and space for new Black and Brown professors. Is Gail as secure as she thinks she is? All signs point to no with conditions.
Despite all of her glossy ideals and sense of friendship and availability with her student, the lion’s share of the faculty at Ancaster have deep-seated racial bias that’s imbruing on the school through Jasmine and Gail’s experiences and not only are they none the wiser – they don’t seem fussed enough to care.
The Illusion of Progress
When Jasmine is overcome by visions, nightmares, and just enough racism to push her over the edge and out of a window, Gail tells a recovering Jasmine not to let them drag her down. Fight.
“You can’t get away from it Jasmine. It’ll follow you, believe me, I know.”
Advice Gail should heed herself. As that tension between her and the faculty escalates after poor Jasmine’s suicide, Gail knows that even though they create shiny diversity programs and exude a semblance of a beacon for marginalized academics, they don’t truly care for Black or Brown students. The microscope will always be at full magnification, the scrutiny and judgment on eleven and the bias, sky high. Our experiences, knowledge, achievements, and mental prowess will always be viewed through a lens of skepticism.
By the end, Gail knows that she is merely that token, that box tick to get things done and having the public ignore their racist ways as long as a Black patsy is standing at the front of the line to prove they don’t see color. Nothing is ever going to change. Not for her, not for any other student of color, ever.
Why Master (2022) Is a Necessary and Uncomfortable Horror Film
Diallo’s film was released with mixed reviews, and I understand it’s a polarizing film. It’s a stark look at what it’s like to be a Black woman in higher education, and I don’t think people were ready for the “Are we the baddies?” conversation. Thinking back to my college days, I was met with millions of microaggressions at the time that I didn’t know weren’t just part of life. Majoring in Business, we were asked to make a business plan for a business we’d like to create someday. I chose a bookstore/record shop, basically a small-town Borders. When I presented it to my professor I was met with, and I quote, “Oh wow! I was expecting like a hair salon, weaves and nails and stuff.” Hmm.
Even having the highest GPA in the course, I was constantly asked to further cite my sources as the reports were “just a little too clean”, something my white counterparts were never asked to do. It’s hell representing yourself and all you’ve accomplished, and in just a few months, that light is dulled, diminished, and, in Jasmine’s case, snuffed out far too soon.
Microaggressions as Horror in Master
Master’s prestigious Ancaster is more than just a setting, it’s a symbol of a broader societal issue with race, privilege, and power. Black and Brown academics are devalued by design. It’s a vacuumed microcosm of a society that promotes diversity and meritocracy, all the while creating and perpetuating systemic barriers that prevent Black and Brown groups from thriving without mobilizing or leaving all together. Master keenly explores how microaggressions add up. Assumptions about intelligence, qualifications or the capacity to succeed, reveal a deep unspoken bias that infiltrates marginalized women beyond the classroom.
The Host (2006) may not be director Bong Joon Ho’s most acclaimed film, but it’s certainly the one that I find myself revisiting the most. At the time of its Cannes premiere in 2006, it was lauded for how effortlessly it handled both a mix of genres that make it hard to pin down and for how smoothly it delivered its social commentary. Beyond that, its dynamic directing and instantly iconic monster make a creature feature of a different caliber. 20 years later, it’s hard to say the film is anything but some of his best work, even against the impressive catalogue that Bong Joon Ho built up in the following two decades of cinematic excellence.
Among the likes of Best Picture winner Parasite, jaw-dropping crime thriller Mother, and even its much more popular creature-drama counterpart Okja, The Host stands as an incisive movie in Bong’s filmography that manages to cut right to the heart, even on rewatches. But what is it that makes it so endlessly effective, and so continuously cathartic, on every single watch through?
The Host, Real Life Ecological Horror, and Dirty Secrets
While kaiju films intertwined with ecological horror are nothing new (Godzilla as a franchise has revisited the well many times since vs. Hedorah in ‘71), The Host is one of the only kaiju films to succeed at really unsettling you with its subject matter. It has a verisimilitude that is undeniable, and the reason why is shocking: it’s actually inspired by a real-life story.
Before Shin Godzilla tackled the collapse of faith in civil authority, the dangers of bureaucracy, and the uncertainty of our ecological future, The Host was here to blend all of our contemporary fears into a thick slurry of sickening terror and add a dash of real-life depression to it. The movie is overtly inspired by the real-life McFarland Incident, in which a mortician named Albert McFarland, working at the U.S. Army’s Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, commanded a subordinate to dump 24 gallons of formaldehyde into the Han River rather than dispose of it properly.
The opening scene of the film is a recreation of this incident, overtly labeled the cause for the film’s monster, the Goemul, to mutate into what it does: a gargantuan, deformed, half-blind fish creature. What ensues from its birth is a harrowing few days in Seoul, as father Gang-du and his estranged family race to try and rescue his daughter Hyun-Seo from the creature. As the Park family’s search for its youngest member puts them on the path of opaque health officials and military hiding secrets about the creature, a clash between the public and the government begins to brew and threatens pure chaos.
Taking Large Scale Horror and Making It Personal in The Host
In the following decades since Bong’s heartbreaker kaiju born of pollution was put to the screen, the real life Yongsan Garrison painfully remains a symbol of ecological irresponsibility on the part of the American military. Its groundwater is saturated with insane amounts of carcinogens, nearly 30 times the permissible standard.
In the great knife twist of governments obscuring the truth, the status of forces agreement between the U.S. and South Korea gives them effectively carte blanche to dispose of chemicals without any sort of supervision or oversight, mainly for the sake of “keeping the peace”; it’s a dangerous and all too realistic parallel to the smokescreen the government uses in the film to keep the South Korean public in the dark, supposedly in the interest of public safety but more obviously in defense of optics.
There’s an ever present irony, and a hard to swallow misfortune in this fact, that makes the film’s biting commentary sting just a little worse and for much, much longer. As our delicate ecosystems hang in the balance, we live with a sword dangling above our heads; few still have hope that the powers that be can or even want to keep it from cutting us. That’s the real horror the film draws on, and it’s a soul draining theme that permeates it.
But amidst these large-scale societal fears that the script explores, Bong Joon Ho has added an emulsifier of sorts. One pivotal ingredient that takes the large-scale and makes it personal: a sense of alienation in everything. The way the film is structured, from how its characters are written, to how its narrative is split, to the very flow of hope and fear that it uses to pull at your emotions, relies on evoking a sense of alienation in the viewer.
A Cast of Characters Without a Country
Each of the characters within The Host is a man without a country. Each one alienated from the other, their estrangement is evoked for some very dry humor at times, but it’s a laugh that makes you cry. In what is possibly the film’s most overtly humorous scene, the Park family falling out and crying at the memorial service, Bong uses the physicality of the event and their clinging to one another before being torn back apart to represent the family’s irreparably divided nature. There’s a deep sickness of longing in the family, a sense of complete otherness from parent to child and sibling to sibling that is delved into as the characters progress throughout the film.
Our main character Gang-du, is the clearest example of a person who slipped through the cracks and simply ended up alienated from the entire world; he’s a child of poverty, malnutrition stunting his mental growth. Neglected by his father, he ended up resorting to picking around for scraps through the tradition of seo-ri, a type of subsistence by theft that becomes the film’s shorthand for the solitary nature of its characters.
Alienation and Family Trauma at the Heart of The Host’s Horror
His siblings both share this hunger, particularly Nam-il. Once a gifted student and political activist, it becomes clear later in the film that Nam-il has become alienated from his own political identity and sense of self. Becoming a cold and mean-spirited alcoholic, Nam-il has grown numb to hope for change as he is left behind by friends who have become part of the system he wanted to dismantle. Disillusioned by the state of government, Nam-il is consumed by nihilism and trapped in the very bottle he seeks escape through. Even the most accomplished of the siblings, Olympic archer Nam-joo, whom the family delights in watching, is alienated by virtue of becoming a symbol of her family and country’s success rather than being her own person.
A Camera That Embodies Separation
As the script puts together these characters consumed by alienation, Bong places them in the frame with the intention to make you truly feel their hopelessness and terror as the world falls apart around them. Bong favors wide shots of the cast, who often stand alone, contrasted against an encroaching threat. The close-ups he uses in conjunction with them are often uncomfortably intimate, reflecting the trapped state of the Park family, both emotionally and when physically endangered by the monster.
The Agent Yellow sequence is the film’s starkest example of this; each of the Park family being swallowed up by the rolling chemical cloud, scattered protestors starting to grow violently ill as they’re separated from their people. But if I had to hedge my bets on the most striking, it’s between two interspersed sequences: the scientists going to lobotomize Gang-du, and Hyun-seo’s daring escape attempt, which coincide at the end of the second act. They’re so radically different in just about every aspect, with Gang-du’s medical horror being bright and hauntingly sterile in its invasiveness; Hyun-seo’s prospective climb to freedom, mere feet away from the monster is caked in grime and masked in minimalist lighting.
Bong Joon Ho, The Maestro of Emotional Manipulation
But both of these scenes exemplify how masterful a filmmaker Bong truly is. After building up these tragic characters you feel dangerously close to and then placing them in nightmare scenarios, he’s able to get his hooks into you. The whole movie is filled with moments like this where Bong, through visual language and frame perfect editing, drags you up and down on an emotional rollercoaster.
He fills you with hope for the Park family and then shocks you with reveals that snatch your seat out from under you. By tapping into our own fears of the world and then placing us alongside characters whose fear of isolation compounds onto your own, Bong Joon Ho’s The Host stands as a film of true emotional power.
It’s a testament to just how truly moving and profound a horror film can be in the right hands, and of the way a genre film can be pushed to its absolute limits. Loneliness is a heavy weight to lay on the heart, and there are few films where it feels as heavy as The Host.
In May 2015, my father died. It wasn’t sudden, but it was difficult nonetheless. I had just moved to Rhode Island, no longer able to afford Boston. One evening that August, in the midst of my grief, I met up with a new friend I had made since moving to the Ocean State. We had bonded over our love of horror movies – the thrillers we loved, the new releases we did not, what we thought was missing from the genre. At some point, I thoughtlessly said, we should make our own horror movie.
So one fine Tuesday night, Brandon Perras-Sanchez picked me up to discuss this possibility. He shared an idea for a horror movie with me that he had with his friend, Christopher Dalpe. It started as an absurd riff on hookup apps. “Brandon and I knew we wanted to put a dick through a meat grinder,” says Chris. We picked him up and all drove to Ogie’s Trailer Park, a dive bar in Providence’s West End. As Brandon recalls, “our blood pact was made that night at Ogie’s.” That evening, we began building upon their ideas of what would become our first feature film, Death Drop Gorgeous.
I bring up my father’s passing because I think, in many ways, this project carried me through my grief. If you’ve watched Death Drop Gorgeous, this might be silly to read – that a John Waters meets 80s slasher drag queen exploitation film helped me process the loss of my father, but as Joni Mitchell once wrote, “laughing and crying, you know it’s the same release.” I’d find myself in cafes in Providence every weekend, writing pages and pages of what the three of us discussed, following our sticky note outline. Then, every week, we’d meet up and read the pages aloud. Brandon made it gorier. Chris made it wittier. We’d change scenes, switch the order, add more, delete less.
Go In, Completely Blind
In this process, we didn’t consider the road ahead. Prior to that, I had always been a type-A Virgo. I planned, I assessed, and I organized. None of us had shot a short film, never mind a full-length. Brandon had gone to school for some sound design, but he didn’t major in screenwriting or filmmaking. We didn’t bother ourselves with those trivialities. Letting go of that control and not considering what it would take to shoot a feature lent to our momentum. Maybe that naivety is in part the reason we finished it at all.
Building a DIY Horror Filmmaking Collective
At some point in pre-production, Brandon looped in his long-term friend, Wayne Gonsalves, to create a more realized character of Dwayne, and his partner, Ryan Miller, to help with finessing the story. We became a strange quintet, running around town, shooting scenes, figuring it out as we went along. No permit? No problem. (Not a joke, we’ve never got a film permit – not for lack of trying! They just never emailed us back.)
At some point, we realized we had to name ourselves. I think it was Chris who came up with “Monster Makeup”; it referenced our first feature: the drag, the gore, and special effects, but it also represented what we did: we made horror movies, we created monsters.
There were a lot of conventions we ignored. For me, this article is not only about reflecting on our work, but also about sharing our process. Like adulthood, there are milestones in a filmmaking career that you’re, allegedly, supposed to follow. I’m not insinuating they don’t help, but there are other ways to make your filmmaking dreams a reality.
The Coven Becomes a Collective
If you finish this article and remember any piece of advice, I want it to be this: if you’re going to shoot a DIY, shoestring-budget movie, you have to have community, and you must collaborate. No matter how intimate and personal your vision may be, filmmaking is inherently collaborative. As a collective, we had to shed our egos. Of course, over the decade, there have been a handful of disagreements, but we never saw our movies as these precious things that only one of us had the final say on.
Funding a Microbudget Horror Movie Through Local Support
Community is the reason our films exist. Death Drop Gorgeous was mostly set in nightlife, and most of us had been working in the bar scene for years. We knew the queens, the venues, what drew crowds and what didn’t. We called in favors to shoot a fake trailer. In addition to a crowd-sourcing campaign, to raise our budget, we also threw fundraising events from a drag show, to a (human) pup Best in Show, to an interactive murder mystery.
“Our projects would not exist without the immense support we received from our friends, family, and community,” says Chris. “Not just money. The spaces we’ve filmed (gifted and donated), the actors and talent (volunteers, many acting in front of a camera for the first time), costumes, makeup, pizzas for the crew – everything has been a labor of love from this weird village, and I’m eternally grateful.”
“We are forever indebted to our Providence family,” Brandon affirms. These films transformed from pipe dreams to community initiatives. As more folks joined our projects, the more it was helped along by others outside our core five. Our thank you speech could be its own feature-length. Somewhere along the lines, we convinced our city we were filmmakers, and eventually, we started to believe it, too.
Working With Your Community as Creative Inspiration
I emphasize collaboration and community because I think aspiring filmmakers feel limited by what they don’t have and not inspired by what they do have access to. We knew drag queens, we knew nightlife, we knew local music. It’s not just “write what you know,” it’s also “write what you have.” I also think some filmmakers have a sense of ownership of their work that doesn’t come from a place of pride but a place of possession. If you’re going to shoot a microbudget film, you need to learn when to take notes, and let others take the reins.
Trial-and-Error
What we learned in the previous film, we would apply to the subsequent project. Saint Drogo, our second feature, was an intentional shift. We lassoed in local photographer and musician Kevin Bowden (who scored a majority of Death Drop Gorgeous) to ensure a more visual spectacle. The quintet became a sextet. We wrote a leaner script without a B, C, and D plot. We wanted to explore another genre and demonstrate our growth. “Myself, and some of the other crew members, lean more towards dark, bleak, folk and fantasy horror,” says Brandon. “We really wanted to take a shot at it.”
While we didn’t want to limit the story, we did go into writing Drogo with the reminder of having undergone such a long production with Death Drop, which included an ensemble cast and numerous locations; we wanted to make filming more manageable for us. Sometimes, the pressure of limited setting or characters forces you to wrestle with the story, assess your resources, and really consider the necessity of scenes. In turn, producing more effective work.
Queen of the Rats and a Decade of Filmmaking Lessons
Our next feature, Queen of the Rats, feels like the culmination of what we’ve learned over the course of these ten years. It’s a meld of our first feature’s flippancy and chaos and the intentionality, cinematography, and nihilism of our second feature.
“I think you’re going to laugh,” says Chris of Queen of the Rats. “It’s a genuinely funny script with amazing characters. But there’s a lot of heart in it, and you might feel sentimental and nostalgic for a time and place that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“It’s even exceeding my own expectations,” notes Brandon. “I know every asshole in the biz will say ‘there’s really nothing like this,’ in regards to their own film, but in all sincerity, there really is nothing like this.”
Defining Success as a DIY Horror Filmmaker
Our method is not ideal for everyone. Sometimes, it’s not even ideal for us. Each project consumes a huge portion of our lives, with productions taking over two years, shot in between our day jobs, and we are still fundraising to make each one happen. But we’ve accomplished a lot and never let what we lack compromise the vision. What I am most proud of is our commitment. It’s also worth considering, however, what you as a filmmaker define as success. Sure, we have bigger dreams, but I still feel a great sense of fulfillment finishing these projects, like I’ve run a marathon.
All our lives have changed in the course of our collaborations. As Chris notes, “We’ve all grown up together. We’re a family, and these guys are my brothers. We’ve all changed jobs, boyfriends have come and gone. We’ve been to weddings and funerals together. We’ve watched the city that inspires our films change and transform…With each creative project we’ve taken on, our community and network has expanded, and it feels like our little creepy family just keeps getting bigger.”
“Being able to navigate through this dystopian pedophile pyramid scheme hellscape with a circle of some of your best friends is a blessing”, says Brandon. “There’s comfort and solace knowing that as our work/life balances wax and wane, our dedication, or addiction, to making horror films and content will always remain a sturdy axis.”
Why Queer Horror Stories Matter More Than Ever
Art carried me through the grief of losing my father. Horror helped me cope. These aren’t new, profound concepts, but something I want to highlight, especially given the current state of, well, everything. We need new voices in filmmaking. We especially need queer stories right now. As humans, we aren’t meant to withstand this much grief constantly. We’re going to need art to carry us through.
Monster Makeup is having a retrospective exhibit in Providence, RI, at AS220’s Aborn Gallery for the entire month of June. Opening reception is June 6th. On June 13th, we will be doing an artist talk at the Aborn Gallery and screening a preview of Queen of the Rats. Both events are free.
Final words of advice from the Monster Makeup crew:
“Make whatever you feel passionately about, no matter how successful it may or may not be. Letting that pass you by will always haunt you.” – Wayne Gonsalves
“Story matters. Whether you’re shooting with Richard Deakins or on an iPhone, if you don’t have a story, you’ve got nothing.” – Kevin Bowden
“Aim high. Make it work. Dedicate weekly time to writing, filming, whatever, and you do not stray from that schedule. Get creative. Do not compare your art to other art in a self-deprecating way. DO NOT GIVE A FUCK WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK.” – Brandon Perras-Sanchez
“Just get started, and you’ll learn by doing. Every mistake you make on set will just make you a better filmmaker. Utilize the resources within your community and its natural enthusiasm for filmmaking. It will only elevate your project many times over.” – Ryan Miller
“Follow people’s advice if you want to do what they’re doing. Follow your gut if you want to do something new. Regardless of which one you choose, do it with friends.” – Chris Dalpe
(Behind the scenes photos of Death Drop Gorgeous were taken by Chris Eastman. Behind-the-scenes photos of Saint Drogo were taken by Maxwell Snyder. All other photos by Kevin Bowden)
