When Alexander Zorn heard about the Sundance Ignite “What’s Next?” Challenge, he knew right away he wanted to participate. The short film competition, a collaboration between the Sundance Institute and Adobe’s film-focused Project 1324, will grant fellowships and trips to the 2016 Sundance Film Festival to the five winners.
Zorn, a 21-year-old senior studying telecommunications, said the fellowship would change his career path and allow him to meet others in the industry. But he said he couldn’t come up with a concept for a short until a moment when he thought about all the chores he’d have to do the next weekend.
He said he realized the list of household duties would fit the contest’s ambiguous theme of “What’s Next?” The resulting film, a six-minute short called “TO DO:,” addresses “the anxiety behind domestic labor, the things people do on a daily basis to maintain a lifestyle,” he said.
In the interest of meeting the Sundance Ignite deadline, Zorn said, he shot “TO DO:” in his apartment the next weekend with his husband, Jacob Zorn. The film consists of a series of household tasks — including some of the chores Zorn actually needed to do — shot largely close-up.
In addition to directing “TO DO:,” Zorn also appears in the film as the lone figure completing the tasks. But he said he wanted the tasks to be the focal point.
“Since there is no dialogue, we didn’t have an actual script we worked from,” he said. “We sat down and made a list of the things we wanted to show and how we wanted to shoot them.”
He said the film’s composition reflects the anxiety of these mundane tasks piling up, with cuts quickening and music intensifying during the course of the six minutes.
He said in addition to making viewers feel that anxiety, he also wanted them to see these tasks from a different angle. In one shot, Zorn dusts a shelf as the camera rotates 180 degrees. For another, he affixed the camera to a vacuum with Command strips so as to catch the appliance’s point of view.
“No one ever lays down and slides along next to the vacuum cleaner,” he said.
“TO DO:,” which went online Nov. 2, arrived early in the Sundance Ignite submissions window, which stretches from Oct. 29 to Nov. 16.
A panel of peer judges will narrow the field to 15 semifinalists in late November, and a jury of Sundance Institute staff and alumni filmmakers will select the finalists. Viewer participation also affects the process, as “audience favorites as rated on the Adobe® Project 1324 website will receive special consideration in their review,” according to the competition’s website. Projects may be viewed at www.sundanceignitewhatsnext.org.
At press time, 68 projects are viewable on sundanceignitewhatsnext.org. Of those, “TO DO:” ranks fifth in number of views and third in number of “votes” — a poll below the videos allows viewers to mark how a film affected them.
Zorn said a chance at the Sundance Ignite Fellowship would mean a boost to his career and his confidence.
“For me, it would validate my place as a filmmaker,” he said. “Notoriety — it gives you the confidence to move forward and try new things.”
