THAT’S A WRAP!
Vivian Gray brings voice and gaze to filmmaking
On the small set of her largest project to date, director Vivian Gray, a young would-be professional filmmaker, wore a practical one-piece romper; a pin featuring a photograph of 1940s Hollywood musical actress Alice Faye; and a white baseball-style cap adorned with a cartoon-like pictogram of a pair of female breasts.
“We’ve got to destigmatize female nudity, one hat at a time,” explained the wry, confident Gray, 19, a 2018 graduate of St. Mary’s Episcopal School who tis month leaves her former all-girl campus and her comfortable Midtown home to begin study at the prestigious School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, alma mater of such storied auteurs as George Lucas, John Singleton and Judd Apatow.
The hat is emblematic. One gesture at a time, Gray also hopes to increase the presence of female filmmakers in a system that for decades has been stubborn and arguably even hostile to the input of female creators.
“Is there a ‘female gaze’ in movies?” the headline on an Associated Press report in The Commercial Appeal asked
recently. The story was about a Lincoln Center film series devoted to female cinematographers that was, in part, a response to recent studies quantifying the movie industry’s reluctance to employ women in key roles in popular films.
In other words, women have been denied a voice — sometimes literally — in commercial filmmaking. A report released last week by USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative determined that only 33 of the top 100 movies at the 2017 box office featured a woman as a lead or co-lead. An earlier study from San Diego State University found that only two of these 100 films were shot by a woman, a percentage that has been more or less unchanged for the past quarter-century. Such numbers seem even more discouraging in the wake of the sexual assault charges against movie and TV celebrities that inspired the #MeToo movement.
“It’s all about opening up spaces because you get more authentic stories from more authentic storytellers,” Gray said. Referring to the short film she shot Aug. 7 in Downtown Memphis, she added: “This is a story about two women, and yes, a dude could do that, but it’s more authentic to the experiences of these women when a gal does it.”
Gray describes herself as “scatterbrained” and a “control freak,” which sounds like a contradictory Jekyll/Hyde combination. Spend time on her set, though, and it’s obvious through her words and her actions — she calls out “Cut! That’s a take!” like a veteran — that more complimentary adjectives apply, including thoughtful, hopeful and determined.
Plus, talented: Gray was the top winner at last year’s second Indie Memphis Youth Film Fest, taking home the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize for her stylish music video for the song “Steps” by the Los Angeles trip-hop artist Epps. The audience prize represented a thumbs-up from the crowd at the packed Halloran Centre, but the jury prize was more practical: a one-day “production package” valued at $4,000 from VIA Productions, a Beale Streetbased professional video company.
On Aug. 7, that prize was put to use as Gray was abetted by a VIA-organized crew of 14 production professionals on a marathon 12-hour shoot for her new short. Tentatively titled “All Our Yesterdays,” it’s a two-person drama about a retired burlesque dancer (Stephanie Norwood) angry over the perceived betrayal of the journalist (Shannon Wolton) who had agreed to be her memoirist.
An office above the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission headquarters on South Main had been converted into both the production base and the film’s single set, a claustrophobic space of exposed brick, Elvis posters, VHS tapes (”RoboCop 2”) and dog-eared paperbacks that was intended to represent the dancer’s bedroom.
To diffuse the light and suggest a lack of ventilation in a room occupied by a habitual smoker, special-effects technician Stewart Holmes pumped atmospheric mist through a perforated black trash bag attached to the front of an electronic “hazer” or “fogger.” Another impressive effect was on Norwood’s face: bloody latex scratch wounds, applied by makeup artist DraVonne Jones, to show that the dancer has scarred herself with her fingernails in an act of selfmutilation.
One element of the design won’t be apparent to viewers: In a signature gesture, Gray, a super-fan, had hidden a picture of the singer St. Vincent on set, as a sort of totem or good luck charm. In this case, an issue of Nylon magazine with St. Vincent on the cover was placed under a bed, “in the hope that some day I’ll be worthy enough for her to pay attention to me,” Gray said.
The general hubbub — the bustle of the crew members, the clapper recording the number of each scene and take, the preparations of cinematographer Stephen Hilbreth, the pressure of the deadline — was new to Gray, whose previous short films and videos were basically homemade affairs. “Normally, it’s me and a couple of my friends,” she said. “So it’s freeing to see what comes with more collaborators.”
In other words, the prize production package is not just a reward but — as intended — a “learning experience,” according to Indie Memphis Youth Film Fest workshop coordinator Joseph Carr, acting as a producer on Gray’s short, along with VIA Productions’ Billie Worley. The producers helped Gray prepare the film, working out a shooting schedule, as on a professional production; in addition, local filmmaker Melissa Sweazy provided some guidance, helping Gray transform her story — originally an episode from a planned feature film — into a stand-alone drama.
The film was scripted by Gray’s St. Mary’s classmate Samantha Lee, who also enters USC film school this fall, to concentrate on screenwriting.
The story “is kind of all about what people will do to be remembered,” said Lee, 18. “I just think it’s a universal feeling, wondering who will remember you. Very few people go down in the annals of time.”
Indeed. Gray had chosen her Alice Faye pin for the slogan “Young Elder” printed above the actress’s face. (The button was produced for a 1986 Pfizer ad campaign, which employed Faye as a spokesperson to reach a “young elder” audience.) Gray thought the slogan embodied the “dichotomies” in her film — the tensions between age and youth, working class and educated class, and so on. But neither she nor Lee — nor, in fact, almost anyone on the set — was familiar with Faye, one of 20th Century Fox’s top stars of the 1930s and ‘40s.
Gray said she hopes to have her film edited by mid-August, so it can premiere, as planned, on Sept. 8 at the third Indie Memphis Youth Film Fest at the Halloran Centre, an event that showcases the work of student filmmakers from across the region. This means a busy August for Gray, who hit the road with her mom Aug. 12 for what she calls an “epic” cross-country drive to Los Angeles. Said Gray of the filmmaking deadline: “This takes up so much time and energy, but at the same time you have this quintessential adolescent crisis going on — flying the coop.”