Long drives, broken equipment and many flowers all played a role in how five University of Memphis film and video production graduate students spent their Spring Break.
"Purloined Irony," the product of the nine school-free days, is based on a poem that U of M graduate student and director Rachel Moeller's mother, Rosemary wrote four to five years ago about some of her former students.
"It's a generational film," Moeller said. "About how the actions of one generation affects the other, whether or not they know it."
Both the film and poem tell the story of some students who stole flowers from a neighbor and put them in a friend's locker at school. The students' teacher found out about the stolen flowers and was hurt by the actions because the neighbor, from whom the flowers had been taken, was her former teacher.
"If this had taken place in a big city, no one would know who did it," Moeller said. "But this is a small town, and everyone knows everyone else."
The cast members were South Dakota locals from the area so that the film would hold true to the accents and the look of the Northern United States.
"It was an interesting experience because most of them had done theater and not film," she said.
Equipment issues created problems during making the film.
The filming equipment arrived in four different pieces from Chicago, Moeller said. But even when all the pieces had arrived, the camera film did not work at all.
"We couldn't use film," she said. "So we shot video instead of film."
Another thing learned on the trip was how to improvise.
"I learned a lot of stuff about being on location," said film and video production graduate student Tiffany Langston, one of the crewmembers. "Especially with being so far away and having to start improvising when needed."
For Moeller, the film is also unique because it was so far away from The University although it was close to home for her.
"It was a really good experience to take a trip since students hardly ever get to go out of town for projects," she said. "You have to make it work. It's phenomenal that we got this film done."
The film took three days to shoot.
"The most appealing thing about this film was that it was out of town," said Lucie Watkins, another graduate student and crewmember.
The project will hopefully be part of Moeller's thesis work. Film and video production students are required to do two films for their thesis work.
Although the film is still being edited, Moeller said she also hopes to enter it in the Oscar Micheaux Film and Book Festival in early August in Gregory, S.D.
"That is what I am aiming for," she said.
