The Elixir

An ugly man turns to the secrets of alchemy to make his inner self apparent on the outside —at any cost.

-

My final for Sight and Sound: Film in the Tisch School of the Arts way back in summer 2010. It was shot on 16 mm film using an Arri S 16mm Camera from 1952.

The story of how this film came to be is complicated. Technical and personal difficulties abounded. The movie almost didn't get shot. Once I got the film I was not able to edit it traditionally or screen it in class so the best I could do was to take video of the reel looping on the Steenbeck editing machine's tiny screen and slap something together in iMovie. (That version can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tharKHAopKM)

Then the original reel was taken from New York to North Carolina and lost for almost a year. Finally, it was rediscovered and the footage was scanned at Technicolor PostWorks. I re-edited the film and the "remastered" version is what you see now.

The two shots with the monarch butterfly were shot digitally and inserted specially for this version.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• mad
• scientist
• crazy
• serum
• elixir
• potion
• monster
• dr.
• jekyl
• mr.
• hyde
• morality
• play
• dark
• psychological
• mystic
• alchemy
• surreal
• horror
• science
• fiction
• philosophy
• short
• 16
• mm
• beauty
• drama
• cinema