Here is my Experimental Film for my Cinema Production class, entitled Secrets. My element was fire, my color was orange, and my word was destroy.
I’ve always been fascinated with fire, and how as an element it means so many different things. For the earliest humans, fire was a discovery. Then for thousands of years, it was a life source: providing light, providing warmth, providing a means of cooking, and used as a means to ward off predators. Today our society sees fire, in a certain way, as a danger. I’m from Texas, and in this past month fire destroyed the homes of thousands of people in my home state… it wreaked devastation, it brought terror, it was a destroyer.
However, as someone pointed out to me, sometimes things need to be destroyed to rebuild again. Isn’t that what Elon did almost a hundred years ago? Everything was destroyed and we rose bigger and stronger from the ashes. I know there are a lot of times I wish there were things in my life that I could destroy and rebuild from, and I know I’m not alone.
With the help of my three roommates, we asked about 40 different people to write down their secrets on scraps of paper. Some of them were seemingly “unimportant” to the unknowing person, but some people bared their deepest secrets. Sometimes people are looking for a release.. for someone to know, for anyone to see what they’ve been hiding, even if they can’t understand. Then late at night, after a serious night spent together with my three best friends, we ceremonially burned the secrets, destroying what destroys us so that we can rebuild again. This is the result of that evening that I think meant a lot more to us than we thought would ever happen. I hope you enjoy it and I hope it’s enlightening to you, just as it was to us.
Celeste Smith 
Celeste,
I really enjoyed the idea behind the film, the burning of secrets. A creative and deep approach to the requirements that were given. I also liked how many different ways you used the fire. You exposed the secrets with the fire (light source) and then burned them with the fire (rebuilding oneself). The music you picked was a great manipulator to give the emotion of the film.
While I enjoyed the film as a whole, I feel like you could’ve expanded on your range of shooting the fire. There was one shot towards the end where you showed the hand using the lighter to burn a crumbled piece of paper and it exposed an awesome visual of the little flame and I just wish you got a tight close up on that. Also, I feel like you didn’t stay on a scene long enough sometimes. When you showed the long piece of paper burning, I would have loved to have seen that for a longer period of time.
Great concept, Celeste and I think you did a great job!