man of la mansion info

logline: When an upper middle class suburban ad exec turns to screenwriting to blunt his rapidly approaching mid-life crisis he discovers that it is considerably more challenging than he anticipated.

runtime: 31 minutes (8 episodes, each 3-5 minutes)

format: still images

budget: $0

script: available here. (though not in script format. I just typed into a paragraph but it was just for me anyway so i didn’t care)

year: shot in 2020, edited in 2021

festivals: Local Sightings, September 2021 | Stareable Fest, October 2021 (Best Editing nominee) | NYC Webfest, November 2021 (Winner, Best Original Concept, Winner Best Vocal Performance, Nominee Best Webseries , Nominee Outstanding Achievement in Writing). | Stareable Fest LA, April 2022 | NYC Webfest 2024 (reprise showing for their 10th anniversary)

thoughts: This was inspired by the constrictions of Covid-19. Stuck at home with no idea how or when to ever return to set to finish Sister/Brother (much less anything else) I began thinking of ways that I could make something with no resources. La Jetee never far from my mind, I considered making a project solely of photographs and voiceover. Eventually, the dollhouse my mom made many years ago in a carpentry class (and which she gifted to my kids complete with furniture and plastic malleable figurines) came to mind. One day I set up the dollhouse and some lights in the garage on our ping-pong table and took around 400 images, moving the figurines around the house randomly. I had no narrative or storyboards or even idea yet what it would be or even if it could be anything. A couple months later I began to review the images and cut them slowly together. A story formed around the man, who I named Steve and who I assigned the idealism and naiveté of a new screenwriter. Like me, he’s middle-aged, a parent, a white dude, and a little self-consumed. Unlike me, he is upper middle class, in advertising, and a bit of a dipshit. Once I had the storyline down, I wrote and recorded the voice-over, had my kids help with a painting for the title sequence and cut 8 episodes. It was very freeing to make this project - no paperwork, no payroll, no catering, no locations, no hassle, no production exhaustion, no crowdfunding, no grantwriting - though it came with baked-in limitations. World Premiered at Local Sightings Festival in September 2021, played at Stareable Fest in October 2021, NYC Webfest in November 2021, and Stareable LA in April 2022.

Watch Man of La Mansion Below (each episode will play one after the other)