Everyone knows the story. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, and they all live happily ever after. Retold over and over again, no matter the couple’s orientation, time or place, this is how society says love should pan out — happily ever after. Unfortunately, that ever after isn’t always happy.
Freshman film student and director Autumn Payne explores this fallacy among other perils of young love in her short film “Rudeneja,” which will be shown in the “UM Short Blocks” at the Oxford Film Festival.
“Rudeneja” was one of nine films chosen by the university. Any student, faculty member or staff member was welcome to submit a film for consideration.
Defined as “the way nature and the weather begins to feel like autumn,” “Rudeneja” was inspired by Payne’s first relationship and subsequent heartbreak. The concept began as a poem which Payne wrote at 16.
At 19, Payne expanded the poem into a short film. The film served as her final project for Intro to Theater, Film and Dance at the university.
“This was my opportunity to finally use the poem for something bigger,” Payne said. “Making it into a film was kind of a weird experience because this was the first script I’ve ever written. As a creative writer, it was strange trying to fit into that format.”
Payne wore many more hats than just director and writer, also serving as cinematographer during the production process as well as editing the film and mixing her own sound.
Described as “a poetic meditation on first love and heartbreak” by the Oxford Film Fest, “Rudeneja” follows Sam and Clara, two young adults, as they endure the extreme highs and lows of young love.
“Their love starts out strong and it follows the seasons,” Payne said. “It starts out wonderful, in warm brightness, the honeymoon phase. They’re absolutely enthralled with each other, but as the story progresses, Sam becomes detached and callous towards Clara. She has to decide if she’ll hold on to this relationship and try to make it work or let it die… She struggles, but by the end of the film she’s able to make a decision.”
Sam and Clara were played by Payne’s classmates, Paleif Raspberry and Aaron Barrow.
“Although they are my friends, I truly believe they did the best job possible,” Payne said. “They were amazing.”
After working with Raspberry and Barrow on the script, Payne developed the film’s storyboard.
“Developing the storyboard was strange but also really nice,” Payne said. “I needed to picture exactly what shoots I wanted — a lot of them worked out perfectly from the crude sketches I made.”
While filming, Payne and her team experienced many ups and downs. After many long hours shooting the daytime scenes in the film, Payne and her crew began to reset for night scenes.
“We were about to move to shoot the night scenes and both of our camera batteries died,” Payne said. “I was pacing, totally stressed out because I knew I didn’t have another. We had to pack everything up and schedule another shoot day.”
Payne said that during shooting on campus, a Starship delivery robot ended up making an appearance during filming.
“One of our crew members tried to scoot it over and then it totally freaked out. Stopped,” Payne said. “We have to just wait for it to just keep going — I think we waited like 15 minutes.” That day, the cast and crew worked until midnight to get the perfect shots. Afterwards, they celebrated with a team spaghetti dinner.
“Rudeneja” is Payne’s first film and certainly not her last. With new ideas coming to her every day, Payne is excited for the rest of her time as a student and for her career, something she’s looked forward to for a long time.
“I always loved watching movies and I’ve always loved art… writing, singing, photography, pretty much anything creative,” Payne said. “Film brings all of those outlets together into one collective masterpiece.”
Payne was inspired to explore cinematography by watching “Stranger Things.”
“At the beginning of the show, there’s a shot where the camera goes through the letters and into the scene,” Payne said. “Somehow when I saw that, I was like ‘This. This is what I want to do.’”
“Rudeneja’s” debut serves as a childhood dream come to life for Payne. The film will be shown on Friday March 25 at 5:30 at the Malco Theater in the Oxford Commons. It is also available on Payne’s personal YouTube channel.
