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“The Drill”is a short film about problems Mainland China spouse face in everyday life, while integrating into his husband's family, due to the political relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Before I studied at Department of Motion Picture (MPD), National Taiwan University of Arts (NTUA) for my MFA degree, I had had this original script. During the MFA program, I kept applying film funds, and finally received the funds for assistance in production of short films from BAMID, MOC, in 2020. “The Drill”is finally finished, and became my final work in this period.
In the past few years in MPD, NTUA, in addition to learning the professional knowledge of filmmaking, I have more exploration on the relationship between creation and self-awareness, and learn to face my own creation more honestly. Therefore, I realized that cinema reflects the doubts I had about national identity since I was growing up. Even more, I my longtime longing for mutual communication with family members, who hold different political perspective against me. I don’t try to promote certain political stance or values through this short film, but only create a pure communication between people.
Through this five-chaptered thesis, I meant to apply all the experience I learned, the review of the creative process and theme I focused during the course. As a complete creative process of “The Drill”, I complied a full summary of my aesthetics at this stage of graduate school studying.
This thesis is divided into five chapters:
Chapter 1 – Prologue, explaining the background of creation, focusing on the exploration of creative concepts and motivations
Chapter 2 - Literature Review, explores the social background and historical overview of “The Drill”; related issues around “The Drill”, such as the origin of the Wan-An drill., the national identity of Taiwanese, and Mainland China spouses' situation and identity in Taiwan; as well as, related films that inspire me.
Chapter 3 - Creation Description, explaining the creation method of the film based on the perspective of the screenwriter and director
Chapter 4 - Production Arrangement, detailed analysis on each position, in the order of the production process: producer, director of photography, art direction, costume design, editing, sound design, score, and colorist
Chapter 5 - Screening and Conclusion, documents the first reaction of the public screening, the Q&A, and further analyzes and reviews of “The Drill”, the future direction for improvement.
Keyword: self-exploration, identity, cross-strait joint marriage, Mainland China spouse, immigrant women.
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