Research and Planning Portfolio

My Idea

To recap, or if you have not yet seen my pitch – My film is almost a dream sequence, but never revealed to be explicitly so. It follows the life – or ideal life – of a young woman, who imagines a simple, rural existence with no job and a loving husband, where she can garden and make biscuits as she pleases in her cottage. This is done through narration. As she dwells on this perfect lifestyle, things start to warp beyond her control – when out picking fruit for jam, she stumbles upon an eldritch monster/cryptid creature. It leers towards her, grabs her face and mutters in a garbled language, knocking her unconscious. She tries to go about the rest of the day as usual, but the flowers her husband gives her die, and when she later falls pregnant, she becomes more or less unhinged, with the film becoming more fragmented and experimental. Her newborn baby is wrong in some way, but the woman, now seeing nothing wrong with the turbulent existence, will now destroy anyone who questions how perfect she has become, including her husband. A common phrase in the script is ‘Is it too much to ask if…?’. She then repeats ‘Is that too much to ask?’ at the end of the film. This sentence distorts and is played backwards, revealing it to be the garbled speech of the cryptid.

Looking for a film festival

I wanted to find an adequate film festival that would satisfy my needs, as well as giving me some guidelines. I used FilmFreeway to narrow down my search by looking for UK based shorts festivals where the entries were still open in early-mid June. I came by the DREAMERS OF DREAMS film festival, which has been running in London for a couple of years. What interested me is that they looked particularly for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Experimental themes. This is perfect for me, as I consider this film to be quite experimental. I am able to submit my film on the late deadline in the ‘short shorts’ category as I expect it to have a run time of less than five minutes.

Cottagecore

What is cottagecore? most readers may ask. Vice’s Sarah Woolley asks the same thing in her article ‘Cottagecore is the pastoral fantasy aesthetic taking over Tiktok.’ Long story short, it is an increasingly popular aesthetic and ideological movement heavily associated with imagery of femininity, kindness, being gentle and rural living. She writes that ‘it’s an unguarded celebration of ethereal, bucolic girlhood.’ It must be noted that it is particularly popular in left-wing and wlw communities, turning the idea that idealising traditionally feminine things are only embraced by regressives on its head.

As part of my primary research, I called to fans of cottagecore to fill out a survey. Despite having well over 100 people filling it out, I can only see the first 40 results on the free version of Surveymonkey, but this is adequate enough to have a look at my target audience. In one question, I ask them to describe cottagecore in their own words. Here are some of their answers:

  • “An aesthetic, mainly defined online, centered around cottage life, typically involving growing plants, raising animals, and generally living sustainably within nature. different than farmcore and other similar “cores” in that it emphasizes the soft, sweet, and/or Romantic-ish (as in the movement) aspects of cottage/farm life rather than the labor aspects.”
  • “Appreciation of domestic and rural aesthetics…fields of flowers, small cosy homes, cooking and baking projects, foraging for berries/herbs/mushrooms…very Ghibli.Ssoft gentle pastoral english countryside fresh baked bread homemade things moss and cobblestones fairies sunshine.”
  • “Comfortable, self-sustaining, doing stuff with your hands, doing something for the sake of doing it, appreciating the little things, warmth and happiness, big grandma energy.”
  • “What I wish my life could be.“
  • “An aesthetic surrounding nature/natural elements. like if you took all the beauty of the world and separated it from all the bad, stressful expectations from society to do things that don’t make you happy. a cottage in the woods, fields, flowers, birds singing, animals taken care of, the sea, feeling at peace in your home and yourself. feeling grounded because you’re surrounded by nature.“
  • “Cottagecore is, like,, it’s reconnecting with the earth! It’s learning how to be sustainable and finding joy in the smaller things in life and in nature. It can be soft, but there’s also that freedom to really make it your own.“
  • “The longing for a simple life surrounded, influenced, and sustained by nature and everything you need to make your heart and home warm. for me it stems from a deep desire to nurture myself and my own little pocket of life.“

Cottagecore originated on Tumblr, where blogs run primarily to share pretty pictures (contrary to the popular belief that Tumblr is only for angry political debate and fandom culture) popularised the rural fantasy that was then given the name. However, the movement has naturally spread to places like Instagram and even original content creators on Tiktok.

Tiktok is a fabulous example of how the reputation of an app can completely change in just a few years. When it was named Musical.ly, the app was mocked by internet savvy teens and young people everywhere. It served primarily as a place for twelve-year-olds to lip sync to sped-up audios or make unintentionally hilarious ‘sad’ short clips, almost entirely unaware of how funny other people found it. However, the tables soon turned, with the meme-savvy downloading the app to make their own ‘ironic’ videos to take the mickey out of the people originally on there. If someone mentioned they had Tiktok less than two years ago, it was quickly followed by ‘but only ironically!’. However, borne from these were genuinely funny trends based on certain audios being used for memes applied to different situations. And so, slowly, Tiktok took hold as the new vine, where short form content thrived, but with a distinctly Gen Z taste. Said taste is surreal and entirely indescribable. Cottagecore has come through, with some people making videos based on the aesthetic.

Below are some Tiktoks which I believe has influenced my film. These are not only ones centred around cottagecore, but also incorporate the surreal, creepy or humorous.

https://youtu.be/v4LceP_yWuM