Lexi Film Spotlight

Today’s film spotlight focuses on the feature film Lexi directed by Victoria Vertuga.

What is the title of your film and what inspired said title?

Lexi. Since over half of the film is JUST our protagonist, we figured it made sense to name it after her 😉

Tell us a little bit about the story and origins of your film.

This project was birthed during early Covid lockdown. Like everyone, our plans were put on hold but we still wanted to figure out a way to be creative and do our craft during that time. So we were looking for an idea that we could shoot that would be mostly me in my house, very contained, in order to be feasible during lockdown. It was an awesome creative challenge.

Any films or filmmakers that inspired this film?

It’s more inspired from real life events and true crime documentaries. The story of Elisa Lam and her disappearance is one thing that really inspired us. The famous footage of her on the elevator (the last known footage of her before her disappearance) where she’s behaving very strangely, but you can’t see what’s on the other side of the elevators, it’s so insanely compelling. It really inspired me to utilize security camera footage for a film because I haven’t seen it done before in a really big way. There’s something extremely compelling about it because there’s a voyeuristic quality to watching it. You feel as though you shouldn’t be or something bad is inevitably about to happen. That and the idea of what you CAN’T see being as important as what you do see. I wanted to play a lot with what was happening just out of the frame, or had just happened that the viewer missed. Also, the very public downward spirals of so many female celebrities and the way the media treated them. The schaudenfraude people have at watching someone seemingly go off the deep end.

What is the goal of the film for you?

The main reason for making this film was to stay sane and productive during covid. Productions were shut down, everything was shut down period, so I really wanted to find a way to use this weird time and still do what I love.  Because of the unique nature of the film and how it was made I find myself feeling less precious about it than with other projects, which is honestly amazing. I wish I could replicate that for everything. So the journey has really been “Let’s see what happens!”

What has the journey been like getting the film into production?

Again, not the typical route to production. It was basically, come up with an idea, write the script, and film myself over a period of months. For my supporting cast, I cast 4 actors that we know really well from other projects that felt comfortable working with us during this time period, got tested before we shot, and cranked them out in about half a day per person. Because the set ups were so simple, it allowed us to really play and me to really just focus on directing their performances, which is one of my favorite pieces of directing. So I absolutely loved that. And then to open the world up a bit, we came up with the idea of incorporating videos from “people on the internet”—fans, haters, what not, to help round out the story. We literally just asked our circle of friends to send us videos and embraced the lo-fi nature of them because that’s how social media videos are. Again, just working with our limitations instead of fighting against them. So yeah, this was not at all like any other project I’ve ever produced.

One thing you learned from this project?

This project was a very interesting exercising in the writing and filming of it. Because we were so limited due to the restraints of covid we knew it had to be mostly just me doing whatever. So they why is she doing this, why are we watching what we’re watching, and how do we find ways to open up the world while keeping it really contained became very interesting challenges.  We had very strict parameters, but within those we were really free to play and be creative, so I found that to be challenging but also really fun. The way it was shot was also totally unique to this project. So much of it was just me in my house either cranking out the VLOGS or experimenting with the ring camera footage. My husband was working from home and I was also working on other writing projects, etc, so I did this very piecemeal around our schedules. I chose to incorporate a lot of things that were in my actual life to make filming easier. I have access to XYZ so let’s throw that in the script. I can try to film around my dogs or just make Lexi have dogs. Decisions like that. A lot of what was in the script didn’t end up playing when I tried it. And a lot of ideas came to me when filming, so it was truly experimental in that way.

How can folks find you and your film online?

You can find me on everything @victoriavertuga.

You can watch Lexi on TUBI tv, Vimeo On Demand, and Amazon. More platforms coming soon!

https://tubitv.com/movies/674518/

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lexi

Any last pieces of advice for fellow filmmakers?

There is never a perfect time or a perfect set of circumstances. So think about what you have available, what you can make happen, and just make your films. You will learn and grow on every single project. Someone recently asked me “How do you possibly write an amazing script?” and I said “you write a lot of bad ones first.” The same thing goes with making movies. Make your project. Take the lessons it gives you and apply them to the next one. I think a fear of perfection keeps a lot of people paralyzed but once you let go of that and allow yourself the freedom to play, it becomes a lot more fun. 

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