Student Filmmaker Blames “SJW”s for His Film Festival Defeat

Curse you Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) and your objective standards of movie quality!

When Nicholas Henderson’s groundbreaking piece of cinematic genius, Loot, failed to bring him the accolades he so richly deserved at the world’s largest student film festival, he took to definitely-about-games-journalism-ethics-and-not-at-all-for-hating-on-progressive-politics /r/KotakuInAction to tell the world the tale of how he was wronged. He began with, “I just sat through a night of indoctrination and been kicked in the nuts by the social justice agenda. I’m so fucking done.”

But he was not done. Henderson proceeded to unload a rant about how he deserved a reward for being a dude who assembled all of the parts physically necessary to create a movie and putting in one entire week’s worth of effort to shoot it. A whole week! (The entire film industry just laughed out loud and has no idea why.) His comments have since been deleted as not even the audience of KotakuInAction could overlook the… other possible reasons his film didn’t do well, but here they are via The Daily Dot:

My cast and crew went through a grueling 100 hour shoot in 6 days. I spent three 20 hour editing sessions to cut the movie right after and hand it in by the deadline. Little did we know, we fucked up. We didn’t need to compose shots, fight the sun for perfect lighting, develop a coherent script, wait for wind, planes, and motorcycles to pass to get good audio. No you could take an afternoon, not know how to use a camera, no need for proper ISO, aperture, shutter, or even a fucking color balance, hell your footage could be completely over exposed or crushed in black to the point where the image can’t be made out, the audio could be sloppy with noise, popping, essing, and inaudible. You could take this one afternoon and film absolute shit, and hand in a recognition worthy film as long as you were in on the agenda. As long as you knew what was up, and got it. Just include homosexual relationships, transgender identity, rape, sex trafficking, poverty, domestic violence against women and you’ll be in.

Are [sic] film was beautiful, it was genuine, creative, and clever. Hell it had to be for what we pulled off with the amateur equipment. I layered multiple video feeds together to have action play on multiple screens cut to fit the screen like comic book panels, and all these screens and feeds synced up, they all cut on action fluidly. A character would move off one panel as it moved into another. I then layered all the video again and added a bloom effect to give us that video game feel and look. I built a monster with my own hands starting with a pvc frame work, building it up with epoxy and carving it out. I made 30 props in just one week by myself. Swords, spears, shields, potions, spell books. I had a text book perfect script about a young adventurer who seizes his first loot only to have it stolen. It was our own world, where video game and anime tropes were real, were old men handed out swords and quests, and you had to pay rent and buy food with loot. It was pure and only about the story, and it was shit canned bc it didn’t try to infect anyone with a way of thinking. I can’t even show you are [sic] film, bc this trash organizations now owns it and I haven’t recieved permission yet to give it the proper treatment it deserves.

Spoiler: there is no prize at Campus MovieFest for “movie shot in least number of days.” That’s generally the sign of someone who doesn’t understand the work that goes into making a movie and is likely an indicator of the eventual quality. Henderson, on the other hand, seems to wear it as a badge of honor with all the obliviousness of a student who complains their printer ran out of ink while trying to print a massive term paper ten minutes before it was due and they couldn’t possibly have had time to go buy more.

Unsurprisingly, when the commenters on his thread found the YouTube link for Loot, it looked like he had taken his own advice on how to rush a production without a thought for how the resulting movie would actually look. Now you, too, can try to reconcile the technical mastery described above with what you see in the final product:

In case you were wondering, the technical quality of three other movies he called out by name—a documentary about a trans woman, another about a girl whose “Ublyft” driver takes advantage of her, and a third also female-led—was demonstrably higher, and this dude could’ve used a second set of eyes during those lengthy editing sessions.

But don’t worry! He learned from his experience:

Our only take away from CMF, is film making doesn’t need to be so hard, we don’t need to keep putting so much effort in and having pride in our work. We no longer have to stress over our capabilities and create something of quality. You just need an idea. You don’t even have to put in the work to turn the idea into anything actionable. The idea just has to be agreeable with the agenda. Take that idea that isn’t flushed out or completed, and just film, don’t compose the shot, set the lights, or worry about what all those damn buttons on the camera are, just roll camera, show us a montage of shots that don’t visually tell a story, and just have a voice over explaining your idea. Then, if your idea is righteous and worthy, if it’s apart of the agenda you will be invited in, you will get work, and be celebrated. This social justice movement really boils my blood. I just want to stop being pushed to think and feel things I have no inclination to think and feel. I want the work to matter again not the intentions behind it. This SJW bullshit is too oppressive, too influential, and just too much.

Honestly, I take no great joy in mocking someone for making an amateur movie that doesn’t come off as planned. Making movies is hard. But once you take all responsibility for your failures and try to blame people who also just wanted to make good movies that had something to say and maybe make the world a better place in the process, I lose a bit of sympathy. This is just one more in a huge sea of nonsense Internet arguments which mock the idea of “social justice” as though wanting the world to be a better place is a bad thing, and it has to stop.

I also lose some sympathy when your description of your “own world”—the one you’re convinced is more groundbreaking and unique than shining some light on important issues of marginalized groups—sounds an awful lot like Scott Pilgrim.

(via The Daily Dot, image via Sean Hagen)

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