Winner of the LACHSA 2012 Moon Dance Best Film Award, and Best Actor Award.
Written, directed and edited by Cameron Covell, this short film, starring Nick Lopez and Analisa Gutierrez, is a love story between two unlikely people. Also with Cameron Herbst, Madison Kirkpatrick, and Tim Wagner.
Q&A with Cameron Covell, director of The Most Beautiful Thin
-Helen Keller
What was the inspiration for this film?
As a young filmmaker, I always like to try and stretch myself with every project that I do. Because of this, at the start of every film I do, I tend to give myself a goal. For this particular project I wanted to strengthen my visual storytelling abilities, so my goal was to make a love story, but with as little dialogue as possible. One of the distinct challenges of this was figuring out how to show the development of a relationship, from the time two people meet, to the point where you truly care about them as a couple, but without having them speak to each other. After much thought, I finally came upon the idea that if one of them was deaf, they would have to find other means to communicate. It was from there that I immersed myself in the deaf culture and began to figure out who this girl really was, and how the two of them needed to interact.
How long did casting and filming take?
Casting was actually an incredibly easy process. I go to a performing arts high school called LACHSA, the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, where I study theater for 2 1/2 hours a day. The two leads in the film are two of my closest friends from school. Because I work with them on a daily basis, I knew their strengths, I knew how to work with them, and I knew they were available and willing. From there, I asked two of my teachers to play the two coaches and grabbed some of my other friends to play the other smaller roles, and I was ready to shoot.
While the actual film process took place over the course of a week, the majority of the filming occurred in a single day. We stole about 2-4 hours a day from Monday to Thursday for filming, and then a massive 14 hour day on Friday, and production was wrapped. One of the reasons we were able to move so quickly was due to our total lack of crew. Being a high school student means it is pretty much up to the director to do everything, so the vast majority of the filming consisted of just me and my two leads in an empty hallway.
Did the Helen Keller quote at the closing of the film inspire the title/story, or was it something you found when the film was already in process?
For the longest time I had no idea what the title of the film was going to be. In fact, all throughout the production of the film, my cast and I were referring to the film as "The Untitled Love Story." I was completely at a loss of what to call it, even going as far as to make up joke working titles such as "Lover Boy's Big Day."
In post production on the film, I knew I wanted to end the film with a quote, and so I began looking up quotes of influential role models in the deaf community. It was then that I came upon the Helen Keller quote and realized that it was speaking exactly to the main theme of the film. I copied the quote over and decided that "The Most Beautiful Thing" had a bit more of a ring to it than "Lover Boy's Big Day."
-What do you hope the audience will take from the film?
William Faulkner said, "The work of the artist is to lift up people's hearts and help them endure." I can ask nothing more of my art. I hope the audience will be able to connect with my characters and to gain more compassion for the deaf community.
cameroncovell.com
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