Anatomy (of a Love Affair)
by Anak Rabanal
Anatomy (of a Love Affair)
by Anak Rabanal
A scientific method to FALL IN LOVE? Does it work? Can film capture the moment two people fall in love? What happens if you experience falling in love through someone else's POV? Anatomy (of a Love Affair) explores these questions with one story through a short film and a virtual reality experience.
A scientific method to FALL IN LOVE? Does it work? Can film capture the moment two people fall in love? What happens if you experience falling in love through someone else's POV? Anatomy (of a Love Affair) explores these questions with one story through a short film and a virtual reality experience.
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Story
About The Project
THE INSPIRATION
"...The first moment
I saw you
I knew I could love you
If you could love me..."
So Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin's seminal play Savage/Love launches us into a poetic exploration of all the phases of a love affair. Many moons ago, Anak directed this play as a wide-eyed college student whose knowledge of the intricacies of relationship entanglement was more theoretical than practical. (What could be expected after four years in all girls' Catholic high school, intensely strict parents and a natural inclination to being an overachieving nerd who was more brain than body?) Her cast was much the same -- throwing themselves off a cliff and betting that what didn't kill them would either get them off or reveal the face of “love". Their combined curiosity allowed them to crawl into and across the underworld that Shepard/Chaiken depicted -- the elation of falling into attraction, the devastation of perceived rejection, the emptiness of finding that one either loves or doesn't love and the all too human impulse to try again even after failure. The play stayed with her through the decades, always managing to resurface as a mood reference or a succinct way of parsing out a relationship dynamic gone wrong.
Enter a New York Times Modern Love Op-ed piece by Mandy Len Canton which was published in January 2015 and entitled "To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This". It quickly went viral -- because who isn't fascinated with the dynamics of falling in love and a method that scientifically ensures that it's mutual? The piece describes using the Aron Method of closeness to fall in love with a stranger. Consisting of 36 questions followed by staring for two to four minutes into each others' eyes, the method was originally formulated for psychologists studying relationship dynamics. It allows them to artificially accelerate the process of emotional intimacy between randomly paired subjects thus giving them greater control over variables in a laboratory setting. Since its development in 1997, the method has been used in hundreds of studies examining not only romantic ties but multiple subjects ranging from racial attitudes to the mechanics of philanthropy.
The article was a catalyst.
Many more questions bubbled up: Can an outsider see that exact moment when two people’s hearts open up to one another? Is it a phenomenon that we can capture with our senses? How would we react to witnessing such an intimate moment? Could or would we fall in love with them as a couple? Is it possible to fall in love with just one of them as if we’re taking part in the experiment with them?
THE STORY
Out of all these questions came the script of “Anatomy (of a Love Affair)”. “Anatomy” because the film dissects the process and then puts all the pieces back together to suss out how it works. It takes place in a lab with two characters -- a woman in her late 30s who questions if she’s still able to fall in love and a man in his late 20s, whose relationship disappointments have brought him to the brink of becoming a cynic.
THE CONCEPT: A NARRATIVE SHORT FILM & VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE
Originally, the intent was to do this as a straight, narrative short. The initial thesis was to shoot and interweave four distinct points of view: the objective experimenter, the traditional objective audience member behind the fourth wall, and the subjective viewpoints of the woman and the man. Layered on top of this would be a sound design that aims to get the audience into the body space of the characters. All of this would culminate in a four minute sequence without dialogue of the two characters completing the final phase of the method. Our aim was to create a three dimensional experience of two strangers falling in love.
Enter technology and the new frontier of Virtual Reality.
The story and journey are particularly suited to the new medium of Virtual Reality. Combining the virtual reality viewer with a wearable subwoofer, we are testing the boundaries of creating an experience in which an audience member can in essence inhabit a character’s body, feel and hear the character’s speech as if it is his/her own. What would that mean in terms of living out this “falling in love” experiment as another person?
In this way, this is a groundbreaking project that seeks to push both media to see how far you can push them to recreate as intimate and personal an experience as falling in love against the background of a scientific method proven to get two people to do just that. Although the narrative and the virtual reality pieces of this project will exist as two discrete entities, they both feed off of each other in terms of look, performance and the dialogue they create aesthetically and experientially between each other.
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Current Team
About This Team
Our team is ready to take on the challenge of taking one story and applying two different but complimentary approaches to exploring and realizing it.
ANAK RABANAL, Writer/Director
Anak was born in Manila, Philippines, grew up in Maryland and graduated high school from Stone Ridge Country Day School of the Sacred Heart. Although originally planning to become an engineer, fate brought her to the Directing Program at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama where she received her BFA with University and College Honors and was an Andrew Carnegie Society Scholar. After graduation, she moved to LA and worked for various producers, including Marty Katz and Lee Miller, before relocating to New York. While there, she found theatre mentors such as George C. Wolf, Jerry Zaks and Brian Kulich. Television production work included shows at NBC and VH-1 followed by a stint in commercial production at Cine International and EUE Screen Gems. Eventually, she returned to LA where she took on the role of researchist and portfolio administrator for the private equity arm of a global asset management firm with ~$5bn AUM. Now integrating her finance experience and storytelling skills, Anak pursues her dearest passion -- film adaptations of the classical canon for contemporary audiences. Recently completed shorts include: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE, based on Shakespeare's Hamlet and set in 1928 against the backdrop of the first Wall Street crisis; and DWELL TIME, loosely based on the Japanese Noh drama Kinuta by Zeami, which explores the affects of undiagnosed PTSD on a soldier and his family as he prepares to redeploy. Both were screened at the Cannes Short Film Corner. DWELL TIME had its North American premier at the Annapolis Film Festival.Upcoming projects include ANATOMY (OF A LOVE AFFAIR), feature film LA CHAVIANO and television series REDEMPTION SONG.
ALICIA PARKER, Producer
Alicia is an Emmy nominated producer with 15 years of experience in media, including: Warner Bros. Records where she worked with such artists as The White Stripes, Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham, and Disney’s High School Musical star Ashley Tisdale; several ad agencies, notably launching numerous advertising campaigns for Sony Broadcast and the billion-dollar video game franchise Rock Band (a collaboration between MTV Games, Harmonix, and Electronic Arts). Alicia was the Executive Producer and oversaw the advertising campaign for The Beatles: Rock Band videogame. Concurrently, Alicia has been passionately involved in film, television and commercials. Most notably she produced ParkSide Production’s THE INVISIBLE AMERICA, an Emmy® nominated documentary that profiles the diversity of the modern homeless, the children’s DVD series LITTLE UPSTARTS, and segments for the web series INDIEVILLE. In the commercial space: Alicia has worked on the global marketing campaigns, including the execution of AVICII’s WAKE ME UP music video (directed by Mark Seliger) that has garnered over 900 million video views. Other campaigns included Cody Simpson, Tinashe and Ruby Rose.
MARK MYERS/CITIZEN SKULL PRODUCTIONS, Producer
Current projects include the indie films HEARTTHROB directed by Chris Sivertson and staring Peter Facinelli, Keir Gilchrist and Aubrey Peeples, 12 FEET DEEP starring Alexandra Park (The Royals), Nora Jane Noone (Brooklyn) and Tobin Bell (Saw), and the documentaries STREET GANG about the origin of Sesame Street and SWORN VIRGINS directed by Marah Strauch (Sunshine Superman). Other projects include, THE CHATTERFIELD POSSESSION with Hood Up Films in Ireland, Rosanna Arquette’s untitled feature narrative directorial feature debut, the thriller DOUBLE YELLOW LINES (screened at Cannes 2015), MANSON FAMILY VACATION with the Duplass Brothers (SXSW 2015 premier), EXPERIMENTER with Winona Ryder and (Sundance 2015 premier) and OMPHALOS staring Austin Pendleton. TV projects include THE POND STARS for Nat. Geo. Wild, a pilot for HGTV and MOTHER OF THE BRIDE for Canada’s Slice Network.
ARABIAN PRINCE, Virtual Reality Producer
Founding member of the rap group N.W.A.Virtual Reality Producer, Technologist, Music Producer/Artist. Though he's known mostly for his early membership in N.W.A., the Arabian Prince has been a producer and DJ since the early '80s, which undoubtedly helped him sustain his career after leaving N.W.A.. Arabian Prince began recording his own tracks during 1982-1983, and co-produced Bobby Jimmy & the Critters as well as doing live dates with the Egyptian Lover, World Class Wreckin' Cru, and the L.A. Dream Team. Early singles like "Innovator" and "Situation Hot" got much respect on the Los Angeles club scene, and his consistent studio experimentation led to some work with Dr. Dre and N.W.A. for 1988's Straight Outta Compton. One year later saw the release of his own first full-length, Brother Arab, for Orpeus. During the ‘90s, his focus shifted to programming and special effects, working on movies including THE ADDAMS FAMILY, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS, and CONTACT. In 1999, he worked with Fox Interactive on video game projects including, The Operative - No One Lives Forever, Lord of the Rings and others. He also operated an animation studio in Korea, working on Kimchi Pong. In 2004, Current projects include a startup that will provide content for virtual-reality programs and 3-D games.
HALYNA HUTCHINS, Director of Photography
Halyna Hutchins is a Los Angeles based cinematographer and a recent graduate from the MFA program at the American Film Institute Conservatory. She has worked on film sets in New York, Boston and Los Angeles and likes to experiment with lighting and impressionistic visual storytelling. Her work as a cinematographer has been screened at international film festivals including Festival De Cannes. Before becoming a filmmaker, Halyna spent her youth on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle and later earned a graduate degree in International Journalism from Kyiv National University in Ukraine and worked as a journalist on British documentary productions in Europe.
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