In Heaven Everything is Fine (2022)
David Lynch’s work has always been very inspiring to me. I'm attracted to surrealism and horror as genres, but attempting to make a surrealist film myself was daunting. I took on trying a lot of new things in this film, and it has been a great start to what I feel is a new chapter in my filmmaking. It is also very personal and cathartic for me to create. When I watched Eraserhead for the first time, I was in a time in my life that resonated with the film. I was captivated by how uncomfortable it was. I felt uncomfortable every second of the day for months. All I could think about was the past year of my life with the clarity of knowing I was lied to. I spent an entire year of my life dissociated from myself, all the sharpness around my edges dulled, and I became a shell of myself in a mentally abusive relationship. In a split second, I learned that much of what this relationship was based on was untrue, and the person I thought I loved was someone I did not know and wished harm upon me. I realized how much of my daily routine, coping mechanisms and identity I rooted in this cycle of abuse. I struggle to remember periods of that year, and I have no photos to document it. I stopped using social media because it was “better for our relationship.” I lost my entire 16th year of life. When I watched Eraserhead, it was a profound moment in recognizing how I felt and that I needed to do something about how much it made me feel.
I had the concept of boils from the woman in the radiator. I felt like the idea of not being able to see the horrible disfigurement on your face and someone lying to you saying it's not there was an excellent way to convey gaslighting. The sudden knowing and being able to see the boils is when you know the truth. You know they lied to you and publicly embarrassed you. It's a horrible, uncomfortable and helpless feeling.
We watch a rash develop on her neck and suddenly sprout into boils on her face. We get two types of shots, reflections with no boils because she cannot see them, and the opposite or mirrors perspective where you the viewer can see them. The camera or the audience plays the role of lying to her, being able to see the boils but instead telling her how much you love her. The bugs can be thought of as consuming her, each one a lie, slowly eating away at her sense of self and identity. Bugs are also a surrealist symbol and tend to evoke an unconscious reaction from people.
On the more technical side, I experimented with using different lenses, sound design, prosthetic makeup, and working with a large group, all relatively new things for me. I shot outside at night using a zoom lens to capture the window shot and a 40mm lens for some of the close-ups. The sound design was a combination of layered sounds to make the white noise, as well as a train horn to add some melody and other various synths and drones. It gave me complete control in building the tension around my shots. Any dialogue is new for my films, but the reversed audio was a struggle well worth it. I had my actor deliver the line from a backwards speech generator and then reversed, slowed, and layered them in post. The prosthetic boils were another struggle that paid off, as well as the large group that was very patient with my takes.
Everything is Fine in Heaven is meant to place you in the uncomfortable state I was in for months, to replicate the experience from the other perspective and therefore allow me to take ownership of the pain he caused. The confrontation of beauty and disgust allured and also sickened. Each day during the months I was making this film, I was confronted with the monotony of teenage girl pain and nostalgia for a past I was currently present. Creating something out of that pain has allowed me to move on from it and close this chapter in my life. And I'm so grateful that for my graduating film, I can do the most valuable thing I've learned in film: to make something beautiful out of the pain and let it go.
I had the concept of boils from the woman in the radiator. I felt like the idea of not being able to see the horrible disfigurement on your face and someone lying to you saying it's not there was an excellent way to convey gaslighting. The sudden knowing and being able to see the boils is when you know the truth. You know they lied to you and publicly embarrassed you. It's a horrible, uncomfortable and helpless feeling.
We watch a rash develop on her neck and suddenly sprout into boils on her face. We get two types of shots, reflections with no boils because she cannot see them, and the opposite or mirrors perspective where you the viewer can see them. The camera or the audience plays the role of lying to her, being able to see the boils but instead telling her how much you love her. The bugs can be thought of as consuming her, each one a lie, slowly eating away at her sense of self and identity. Bugs are also a surrealist symbol and tend to evoke an unconscious reaction from people.
On the more technical side, I experimented with using different lenses, sound design, prosthetic makeup, and working with a large group, all relatively new things for me. I shot outside at night using a zoom lens to capture the window shot and a 40mm lens for some of the close-ups. The sound design was a combination of layered sounds to make the white noise, as well as a train horn to add some melody and other various synths and drones. It gave me complete control in building the tension around my shots. Any dialogue is new for my films, but the reversed audio was a struggle well worth it. I had my actor deliver the line from a backwards speech generator and then reversed, slowed, and layered them in post. The prosthetic boils were another struggle that paid off, as well as the large group that was very patient with my takes.
Everything is Fine in Heaven is meant to place you in the uncomfortable state I was in for months, to replicate the experience from the other perspective and therefore allow me to take ownership of the pain he caused. The confrontation of beauty and disgust allured and also sickened. Each day during the months I was making this film, I was confronted with the monotony of teenage girl pain and nostalgia for a past I was currently present. Creating something out of that pain has allowed me to move on from it and close this chapter in my life. And I'm so grateful that for my graduating film, I can do the most valuable thing I've learned in film: to make something beautiful out of the pain and let it go.