Slamdance Film Review: Driftwood
January 26, 2016 by admin
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Driftwood
Slamdance Film Festival
Director: Paul Taylor
Writer/director Paul Taylor’s first feature, Driftwood, is a small, intimate and refreshing chamber piece that still manages to speak in droves—an impressive feat, considering that the entire film is dialogue-free.
Driftwood begins with a blurred shot of the sea and sky, coming into focus when a young woman (Joslyn Jensen) washes ashore. An older man (Paul C. Kelly), who seems to be grieving, finds the young woman and lays claim to her, taking her to his home, a bucolic and isolated red house located somewhere in the woods. There, he conditions her. He teaches her how to bathe herself, to fry eggs, to put on black lacy lingerie. Jensen does well as the young woman, who rarely reacts or emotes, mostly seeming mystified and out-of-place, whereas Kelly brings an unsettling softness and gentleness to the older man’s alarming actions. It’s a disquieting relationship that steadily intensifies. Each time the young woman wanders outside of the house, the man disciplines her by slapping her in the face, tying her to a wood railing and chaining up her door at night. Familial roles and identities are obscured: All at once, the man assumes the role of father, mentor, companion, caretaker, manipulator and husband, obliging the young woman into whatever respective role he deems appropriate. What unfolds is a gripping, tense and strangely idyllic examination of what it means to take captive and to be held captive.
For Taylor, choosing to divest Driftwood of dialogue (and, for the most part, any soundtrack) was an ambitious effort to move away from the tendency of many independent films to rely on sharp dialogue to carry their narratives. Taylor’s endeavor was an ambitious one: stripped of language, his film had to rely on visual cues and ideas to power the underlying concepts throughout the narrative. Paying testament to seminal chamber pieces like Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Taylor limits the scope of his film to these few characters and their interactions, secluded within a home and its immediate surroundings. The silence deafens, but visually, Driftwood is surprisingly and impressively at odds with its premise of captivity: We rarely see the man violently discipline or abuse the young woman, but we can immediately sense the implications of their strained exchanges; the majority of the scenes are filmed in pleasantly bright, open settings; and the shots are frequently long and static, so that the characters are free to roam outside of the frame.
Driftwood features exceptional sound editing and mixing—thanks to a collaboration with Emmy Award–winning sound studio, Silver Sound—which lends an effortless hand to maintaining the film’s eerie atmosphere. There’s a surprising fullness to the piercing sound of silence, which keeps audiences on edge and captivated: When manipulated well, mild ambient noises can become cacophonous, the subtlest of movements ear-splitting. Through the bare essentials of filmmaking, Driftwood provokes viewers into an intimate and elongated engagement with its characters and the troubling discomfort of their circumstances.
Driftwood will screen at the 22nd Annual Slamdance Film Festival on Jan. 24, 2016 at 3:15 p.m. and Jan. 27, 2016 at 10:45 a.m. For more information about the film, visit facebook.com/Driftwoodmovie.
Showtimes:
Jan. 24, 2016 / 3:15 p.m. / Gallery
Jan. 27, 2016 / 10:45 a.m. / Ballroom
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Underwear Goes Over Online
January 26, 2016 by admin
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What’s in a website?
For an eCommerce or multichannel merchant, literally everything.
It’s fair to say that most online retailers worth their salt understand that the look, functionality and scope of what is effectively their storefront and their store all in one collectively constitute their singular means of building, maintaining and expanding their customer base and — just as importantly — differentiating themselves from the competition.
More complicated than simply comprehending that reality, however — particularly for a merchant whose business is on the rise — is the challenge of how to grow the capabilities and reach of a digital shop without sacrificing the established brand, alienating consumers or, frankly, overwhelming itself.
Recently, the Denver-based high-end lingerie retailer SOL found itself in the position of needing to upgrade its online platform in order to facilitate revenue growth and more successfully engage its customers. Towards these ends, the unique brand (which prides itself, for one, on its bra-fitting expertise) sought an enhanced visual design with greater system performance and scalability. For guidance, SOL sought the commerce solutions company by the same name — Guidance — and started its online journey looking for inspiration in the most unlikely of places: SOL’s physical store.
Guidance feels strongly that for a merchant that has a physical store presence — and, therefore, brand identity — that exists in concert with its digital operation, revving up the online experience in a way that is complementary to the in-store experience is key. So, first up was a visit to the SOL store in Denver to immerse itself in the customer experience firsthand. This process laid the groundwork for the new visuals, intuitive navigation and editorial tone — including copy and a customer-interactive content strategy — that was instrumental to the new online experience.
And then a funny thing happened: SOL doubled its online revenue in fall 2015 when compared to fall 2014.
What determines the effectiveness of an online retail store is, of course, the customer experience. Guidance improved that for SOL on the Magento 2 platform on two levels: first, by addressing the core elements, like the product listing page, product detail pages and checkout; and then, through elements that were (and are) specific to SOL’s brand voice and product offerings, such as engaging editorial content and interactive features (related to research, fitting information and learning about SOL’s bra-fitting experts from their personal profiles).
“We now have a beautifully designed site in three short months on the next-generation Magento platform that provides all of the features, flexibility and scalability we need at a very reasonable cost,” remarked Jeanie Peterson, co-owner of SOL.
“Looking forward from this point,” Peterson remarked, “we’re really excited for the great results we will achieve with Magento 2 in 2016.”
Peterson’s optimism regarding the future of her business online just underscores what any growing eCommerce merchant seeks to achieve — because, as it turns out, the website is everything.
