Image courtesy of director
Yesterday Eddie Alcazar's terrifying short film FUCKKKYOUUU, which features original music from Los Angeles experimental producer Flying Lotus, hit the internet after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this past weekend.Shot entirely in black-and-white 16mm reversal film, the eight-minute clip was inspired by 1930s horror films and Japanese flicks, with an eerie forest, monsters, time travel, and the Brainfeeder boss' ominous score.We wanted to know how the collaboration came about, so we gave the New Mexico filmmaker a call to find out more.THUMP: How was your Sundance experience?Eddie Alcazar: It's been amazing, just trying to check out the most amount of films in the shortest time. We had a party for the film with Flying Lotus, he shattered the stage so they had to evacuate it.Tell me about how you guys met and why he got involved in the project.
This friend Nate who works at a production company introduced us. Mainly we just talked about a feature film, so we decided to work together on this short, and see how the relationship went and work on something small before jumping into a feature.I had a few meetings with Steven, and he played me a few original tracks. There was one in particular that inspired the torture sequence you see in the film. We basically did one shoot and I storyboarded a few sequences. Then we had about a month and half downtime to take it all in and edit, and then we went ahead and shot another day.Had you listened to his music?
I was definitely familiar, but I didn't really get as deep as I did after I started working with him. I was really inspired by his mood and tone and emotion for this film. I wanted it to be a pretty raw collaboration, I didn't just want to be doing my thing. I'm able to tap into his psyche and understand what he wants to put out there.Whose decision was it to use the Sylvia Plath quote at the beginning?
It didn't really get into the film until the very end. I was pretty hesitant to put any words because I wanted to try to do something that was 100 percent universal without any specific language other than the visual language. I was reading this book on Sylvia Plath and I was like "Wow this really connects with what I'm doing right now."I first tried a voiceover to see how that felt, quickly scrapped it, and then I threw it into the front as quotes as a temporary placeholder. FlyLo loved it and everybody else we showed it to really liked it, so it seemed like a good idea to leave it in.Did you ever consider going with a less provocative title?
That title came from the track that FlyLo had. I think he was just mashing around on his keyboard and came up with that variation of "Fuck You." He just had it there as the title until the end, and I feel like it naturally added this cohesive tissue with the story and the woman having sex with herself.I understand you worked on the music video for Adele's "Someone Like You," would you ever consider directing one?
I did visual effects for it. I'm definitely open to it; I've been talking to a few different people, but it's best to collaborate rather than it single-handedly be the director's concept or the artist's concept. I really enjoyed it with FlyLo, he was perfect to collaborate because of how open he was to ideas.You can check out more of Eddie's work here.Max is on Twitter.
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This friend Nate who works at a production company introduced us. Mainly we just talked about a feature film, so we decided to work together on this short, and see how the relationship went and work on something small before jumping into a feature.I had a few meetings with Steven, and he played me a few original tracks. There was one in particular that inspired the torture sequence you see in the film. We basically did one shoot and I storyboarded a few sequences. Then we had about a month and half downtime to take it all in and edit, and then we went ahead and shot another day.Had you listened to his music?
I was definitely familiar, but I didn't really get as deep as I did after I started working with him. I was really inspired by his mood and tone and emotion for this film. I wanted it to be a pretty raw collaboration, I didn't just want to be doing my thing. I'm able to tap into his psyche and understand what he wants to put out there.Whose decision was it to use the Sylvia Plath quote at the beginning?
It didn't really get into the film until the very end. I was pretty hesitant to put any words because I wanted to try to do something that was 100 percent universal without any specific language other than the visual language. I was reading this book on Sylvia Plath and I was like "Wow this really connects with what I'm doing right now."
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That title came from the track that FlyLo had. I think he was just mashing around on his keyboard and came up with that variation of "Fuck You." He just had it there as the title until the end, and I feel like it naturally added this cohesive tissue with the story and the woman having sex with herself.I understand you worked on the music video for Adele's "Someone Like You," would you ever consider directing one?
I did visual effects for it. I'm definitely open to it; I've been talking to a few different people, but it's best to collaborate rather than it single-handedly be the director's concept or the artist's concept. I really enjoyed it with FlyLo, he was perfect to collaborate because of how open he was to ideas.You can check out more of Eddie's work here.Max is on Twitter.