MAKING: STARS FOR MY DOG

A look into the beginning stages of STARS FOR MY DOG. My first narrative film. All shot in quarantine, Fall 2020.

Seeing as this was the mid-term for my Introduction to Narrative, I had to constantly be thinking of a story to develop. A lot of the concepts came from daydreaming during Mass (sorry, Mom) and thinking about my first semester completely in quarantine. I had a lot of ideas for the opening, voiceovers, and general storyline in the form of visual snippets that I would later try to emulate as true to my brain as possible. Every Sunday I would seem to get some 30-minute “clip” of what scenes I wanted and it was only a matter of time before I wrote an actual story that could use them.

I took a lot of inspiration from the dynamics of being quarantine. Our dog, Ollie, didn’t have the opportunity to socialize or train with other dogs because of the pandemic, and like with most quarantine puppies, he over-bonded with me and my family. I think a hard part of quarantine is just the tension that comes from being around the same people constantly, especially in a confined space. On the other hand, it can feel really isolating because you’re not seeing others and you’re stuck in your house. So, with these three ideas in mind, I tried to create a narrative that was relevant to the experience without being derivative of other art and stories made in the pandemic.

During the peak of the quarantine, I found myself wondering what it would be like to live alone during all of this. I wondered if it would be better or worse. I think I leaned more into the “better” route because I found myself being irritable around my family and vice-versa. I think spending months in the same space with the same people will inevitably cause nitpicking — whether that be in general organization habits, or even how you eat your food. I think it’s especially hard if you’re an adult living with your family because you can’t really prove that you’re an adult. Losing your job is disappointing, and not just to yourself. You feel like a kid again, without the carefree happiness. Dependent.

On the other hand, I thought about what it would be like if I moved out before the pandemic. It would be nice to not fight every other day, but living in complete isolation seemed even worse. I thought about how me and my dog’s bond would be suddenly severed, for both of us. With getting my first dog, I realized that human-dog relationships are often just as deep as human ones, but a lot of complexities come in when you can’t communicate why you’re leaving. If you’re coming back, even. I don’t think leaving my dog after being with him every day for months would be beneficial to either of us. How do you even get closure from that?

With the concept of Stars For My Dog, I chose a storyline that strung together all of these factors. What if I did go to space? Regressing back into childhood dreams is always an interesting move. Seeing yourself as a kid, especially your hopes is always very telling and I wanted Vicente to essentially do that. I’d like to think that it was a rash decision. It’s the equivalent of being a kid and not getting what you want so you decide to run away from home. Except this time, you make it out the door. Vicente initially leaves to avoid family tension, reflection on identity, and just Earth’s problems altogether. He doesn’t put his dog into consideration, and in turn, other people affected in his life. But he learns his lesson. Floating around, by yourself, in a cardboard box for a year will do that to you.

Quarantining for 14 months will, too.

Most of pre-production was devoted to creating the set. Seeing as this would be a one-person mission, I tried to keep the DIY-feel while still making it possible to execute well on-screen. I needed a set that was small enough to manage in case people came in, but also spacious enough to put equipment in without tripping over wires and being in the shot. I borrowed my mom’s divider that she uses for work meetings and just used industry clamps to steady the cardboard as “walls”. I used a thin hamper to balance the long console so that it wouldn’t be wider than the console. I remember really wanting to get more “Western” boxed food that could be realistic in space but I found that the only food we really had at the time was from Seafood City and I think Vicente would have preferred being stuck in space with better and familiar food. I got my Tita in the Philippines to send me a voice recording of the script in Kapampangan, and it was relatively easy to add subtitles to because I could understand it. It’s also a reference to the fact that my mom wanted me to learn Tagalog or Kapampangan when I was really young so that I could speak, but in most diaspora-kid cases, I can only understand it. The CD was supposed to be recorded at birth with the intention of Vicente being fluent, but as we see, Vicente can not only speak back in the language, but he can’t send a message back at all. The look was loosely based off of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Most of the set was made of cardboard lying around and a roll of tinfoil. I think I had about five variations or forms of glue at one point during production (though hot glue was the most used) and I used duct tape for the “structure” of the actual props. The keyboard was the longest prop to make because I needed it to have clean cut buttons, which was a problem since the cardboard was layered. It also took some time for me to figure out what method was most cost-effective for typing, because I knew I wanted the keys to actually move, but springs and keyboard parts are not easy nor cheap to come by.

For non-cardboard elements, I got most of the props online and just designed it to my liking. For the “Reuniter 3000”, I ordered a cheap shuttle model and some paw-print stickers. Then, I ordered a bunch of those soldier toys that come with parachutes and snipped off the parachutes to attach to various points of the shuttle. To shoot the scene of it floating down through space, I recorded it upside down so it looked like the parachute was still open. My original thought was to add strings to the top of the parachutes and “puppet” it, but since I was doing this myself, I also had to flicker the lighting. At the time, I only had a cheap work-light that I got from Lowe’s so I ordered two cheap LEDs to use (which may have been the same ones Bo Burnham used in INSIDE). The biggest problem with them was that they had short cables and I found myself knocking them over if I moved too suddenly.

The hardest part of this all was really shooting. At this point, my school’s equipment lab wasn’t open, so I had to rely on small beauty mirrors and luck to achieve the shots I wanted. A field monitor would have saved me a few hours, and my eyesight, guaranteed. Since I couldn’t monitor my movements live, I had to re-shoot a lot of scenes because I would bob out of frame, especially with the eye close-ups. It was also near-impossible to get the focus right, and I regret not thinking of measuring out from the lens. Coming up with the transmissions was also a challenge because I was only half-way through my After Effects course and I didn’t have much experience with grain, either.

This was easily one of the most tiring projects I've made, but I am more than happy with how it came out.