5 Questions with Kristine Morgan
Depicting a young woman engulfed in flowers, “Haus des Meeres,” by Kristine Morgan, is a lovely video art piece circling around creation and destruction. We asked Morgan how the project started, what the biggest visual challenge was, and what comes next for her…
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in film/video making?
In high school, I was a newspaper kid. A friend who did the comics gave me this list of movies to watch - I Heart Huckabees, Pulp Fiction, Garden State, Trainspotting, Big Fish, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Fight Club, Requiem for a Dream - really great movies to watch for the first time while a teenager. I scrounged the bargain bins at Walmart and Blockbuster (4 for $20 shout out) and found them all on DVD. Around this time, I also picked up the shooting script for Juno. I ended up choosing to major in film once I went off to college.
2) How did this project start - what was the earliest element that came to you, and how did you go about building from that?
For a few years after college, I was trying to make my own work but also making photographs as a means for collaborating with others. I spent entirely too much time looking at what "worked" on Instagram, and it was not healthy, so eventually I wanted to comment on that. I kept seeing a portrait of a girl covered in flowers, the kind of thing that would get a lot of likes online. I started to just connect all kinds of stuff in my head, about our society, the vapid nature of a lot of it, the darkness of capitalism, violence, even things that aren't inherently bad but can take you over. For example, makeup isn't bad, but when coupled with racist beauty standards and deceptive, sexist advertisements, it certainly can be negative. In my mind, all kinds of problems can all be connected, often by greed, and the project just kind of grew through this stream of consciousness.
3) I'd love to hear a bit about the filming of this - how long did it take? did it go generally as planned? what was the biggest challenge visually?
I went first to my editor and animator, Andrew Hakim. He's one of my best friends, and we'd been wanting to collaborate for awhile. I think he'd done some stop motion, so he helped me with a lot of logistics in pre-production. We talked about setting up for both stop motion and planning for motion graphics to be added. The actual shoot probably took less than six hours. We did it really low-key on a weekday because both the actor, Regina Soza, and I worked at a coffee shop and always worked weekends. Because we had a thorough plan, it was pretty smooth, but it was tedious because of the flowers. We basically just used scotch tape to secure them to Regina's skin, which was not perfect, but I don't think it was too terrible of an experience for anyone involved. Visually, it was challenging to marry the different elements. I wanted the motion graphics to be surprising and fun and sort of in between realistic and cartoony. I really wanted the film to progress from cute to weird with a certain flow. I think the music, by Brent Glanville, was what helped it to flow the way I pictured. I told him to think Pixar animated short with the music.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
I just saw The Art of Self Defense by Riley Stearns a couple days ago. It was a perfectly crafted story and universe. It was compelling. It was suspenseful and surprising. It was relevant. I’m drawn to work that is excellent but also inclusive, intersectional storytelling or casting; I’m looking for stories that interact with our time. I’m looking for work by underrepresented voices or work by people aware of their privilege and hoping to make something intentional that contributes something to a conversation. If I’m going to make movies, as a white person, I want to make sure that I have something to really say if I’m going to take up space. It’s something I wrestle with a lot. So I love work that is aware of those sorts of things - but still, of course, really entertaining and moving. Everyone should go see that movie. Jesse Eisenberg is incredible.
5) What’s next for you?
I have two short films that I'm hoping to release soon. Both are more narrative than this one. One is about a divorced couple, and the other is about a Y2K doomsday prepper. I'm wrapping up a feature as well; it's been a long-term doc/narrative hybrid project (and yes, a little meta), and I'm excited close this chapter. I'm also working on a feature script about high schoolers in Indiana in the late 2000s.
