What Am I Doing?

Feeling stuck. Can’t move forward. Which direction do I go? Afraid of my future. Time is running out. Am I good enough? Merging reality with a symbolic representation of the mind, the film attempts to capture and express the feelings of frustration and self doubt.

featuring Varvara Kane

written/directed/edited by Michael Gugger & Varvara Kane
cinematography by Michael Gugger
production design by Bruno Tormos
artwork by Thomas Hart
music: Uncharted Territory by Live Footage [ livefootagebrooklyn.com/ ]
additional music by: Ryan Taubert and A. Taylor.

Director's Statement:

When coming up with this concept, the both of us had found this subject to be quite dominant in our lives. At that time, we had made some big life changes. The decision to make these changes came from a place of frustration - a feeling of regress and unfulfillment. We both had this itching need to propel ourselves onto a new path. Not knowing what our future held as a result of our decisions became intimidating and it led to a lot of self-doubt. With this film we wanted to evoke these feelings by capturing these emotions through sound and imagery.

We chose to center it around an artist because a friend of ours, Thomas Hart, makes these beautiful monoprints - many of which really reflected the mood of our concept. We got to use his art in the film and he even made a few pieces for the film as well. Thanks Tom!

The two of us (Michael and Varvara) are in a long distance relationship and we wanted to create something that would bring us closer together as a creative team. Working with each other in this capacity was certainly a very different experience. Trying to maintain a professional workflow isn’t easy when you are so close but we embraced every moment.

Even though we were co-directing together, it became a big challenge to direct on set since Michael was DoP and Varvara was acting. Luckily we had our good friend Bruno with us who did an amazing job designing our set (with no money) - he was also fixed most of our problems on set and had great input when we needed a third pair of eyes. Other than him we didn’t have any crew members and probably wouldn’t have pulled it off without him - Thanks Bruno! Also thank you to our good friends Topu and Mike of Live Footage for providing us with their track "Uncharted Territory". Our film would not be possible without this amazing team! Thank you to our supporters and viewers, we hope our film connects with you in a way we could only imagine!

Cast: Michael Gugger, Varvara Kane, Bruno Tormos, live footage and Musicbed

Tags: What Am I Doing, short film, anxiety, self doubt, frustration, a7rii, DJI, Mavic pro, drone, artist and a7sii