Film as an Explanation: “Bulletproof” (2018) and “Saying Goodbye” (2020)
Inspired by the gun control movement following the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida, Bulletproof (2018) documented the concerns of those at the March For Our Lives march in Washington D.C. on March 24, 2018. And, created during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Saying Goodbye (2020) depicts two teenagers, Emily and Isaac, as they navigate what is left of their senior year from 6+ feet apart. Both of these stories describe the heartache and perseverance of youth during unique, major life events I have experienced in high school, and, as such, have more of my soul embedded into these projects.
The idea for Bulletproof came around shortly after the Parkland school shooting. I was inspired by the movement and joined the efforts of thousands of schools across the country to participate in the National School Walkout for gun control and school safety on March 14. My longtime collaborator and friend, Logan Calder, was similarly influenced by the work of the youth, and approached me and our other friend Austin Segal to create a documentary about it. Naturally, being drawn to the idea of activism through the artistry of film, we all agreed to work on it together.
We were somehow able to convince our families to drive from New Jersey down to Washington D.C. around March 24 to attend the demonstration, which ended up being one of the largest demonstrations in D.C.’s history. We could barely breathe among the high volume of people, but we took our cameras and documented all we could. Austin and Logan, having traveled down there together, focused on getting interviews, while I was in charge of getting B-roll, in addition to participating in the event itself. We had signs in our hands, cameras on tripods, pins on our shirts, and our passion for gun control activism reignited within us.
This being our first documentary, we worked on editing the project together. It was not often where all three of us took on every role simultaneously on a film, but it was necessary for this one simply because we were trying a new genre. I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at Rutgers University regarding my school’s walkout, and Bulletproof had its first premiere during my presentation there. Several months later, it was a finalist at the NJ Visionaries Film Festival, which was the last time I viewed the film until this very project, three years later.
I took a similar approach with Saying Goodbye. Having to create a film for my Advanced Video & Film class at school right after schools shut down due to COVID-19, I approached Logan with an idea about creating a fictional story that would illustrate our current reality because we were in such a unique position as high school seniors losing our last bit of high school due to the pandemic. Thankfully, he agreed.
I wrote the entire 17 page script one night at the end of March in 2020. At this point in the pandemic timeline, people were still anticipating returning to school after a two week period. Something in my gut told me we weren’t. To cope with this impending feeling of doom, I wrote out what eventually would turn out to be true: frustrations with online school, the cancellation of in-person classes altogether, and missing out on our senior prom and graduation. What was scarier was that my timing for these life-changing events turned out to be correct. So, though it hurt to act in a story we were currently living in, I still needed a project to submit for class, so Logan and I powered through.
We shot nearly everything remotely or from several feet apart at my high school. The segments in the film are intercut with clips from a short film we had made a year earlier, called Now & Then (2019), about our same two characters being nervous for our future, specifically with college. Everything was filmed in April and May, with the initial premiere of the film being at my (socially distant and masked) graduation party. It premiered officially online in August of 2020, making this not only the longest film I’ve ever worked on in both run time as well as production time. And, just like Bulletproof, I could not stomach to watch it again until I got to this project.
These two films are a little too close to home. Unlike Lemonhead (2018), I put an incredible amount of my life into these two projects. I made them to cope with the reality I was living through and to see if anyone shared what I was feeling. Both of these events significantly changed my high school and overall life experience, to the point where I do not know where I would be, both as a filmmaker and human being, without having made them. Documenting my life, whether in nonfiction or fiction, was necessary for me at the time to manage my relationship to the world.
But now I find it hard to revisit these films. It took me several hours to rewatch these films for this assignment. Part of me knows that some aspects are cringey and feed into various documentary/fiction tropes, which absolutely makes it difficult to watch being that I have grown so much as a filmmaker over these past few months, but also… is it too soon to revisit them? Or did I document these parts of my life in an effort to unintentionally repress them? To not have to think about it anymore?
But if that’s the case… what is my limit on pouring myself into a project? And again, at what cost?
WORKS CITED:
Diaz, Gabriella. “Bulletproof.” Youtube, uploaded by Segal Cinematics, 28 April 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watchv=rLMgkDfUbKo&list= PLVM1S4Gt49F5jWC0l-m9t2x8vpMgcBtwZ&index=13.
Diaz, Gabriella. “Saying Goodbye.” Youtube, uploaded by Gabriella Diaz, 1 August 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watchv=rLMgkDfUbKo&list= PLVM1S4Gt49F5jWC0l-m9t2x8vpMgcBtwZ&index=13.
