Glass Cage is a mother daughter bedtime story about growing up in the world. It deals with societal paradigms and body issues. Like any good bedtime story it features projection mapping, explosions, and cgi. It was a complete passion project.

Director’s Statement

Often times films are a labor of love. We’re all familiar with the story of the long hours, the lack of budget, the sacrifices, and the lengths and actions filmmakers take to tell their stories. We won’t bore you with the details, but with sincerity assure you that like those films and those stories, many obstacles were overcome to get this film before you today. What you are about to view is a visual effects heavy, 4k finished indie movie and technical undertaking, and it’s a story about acceptance of self and being brave in the shadow of societies expectations.

“Glass Cage,” is a film about self love. It explores archetypes in society through a mother and daughter bedtime story. Just like any good story, it has all sorts of fun twists and turns, levitations and explosions, projection mapping and visual spectacle. It’s a film that explores society and its constructs, and women dealing with body issues. Different body issues are displayed through an interwoven series of abstract vignettes, connecting to a larger narrative about life and growing up in the world between a mother and daughter a little past bedtime.

This project was made in Portland Oregon, shot on the Red Epic / Red Dragon, and
features a large group of artists coming together to tell a story about the acceptance of the self, and how women can overcome adversity by looking within themselves for strength. The film took 1.5 years to complete, but only 4 days to shoot. There’s shots in this film using experimental techniques with new technology that hasn’t existed before using “Pixelstick,” a long exposure technique and light painting technology, there’s some humor, and most importantly there’s a lot of heart. We explore the “Glass Ceiling” that society puts over women’s equality and self image.

This was a large passion project and featured talented vfx artists donating their time. Two of these artists, Ray Kelley and Celeste Leizer, have worked on such films as “Star Wars: Rogue One,” “Last Witch Hunter,” and “The Great Wall.” It features a cast and crew from Portland Oregon and was made on a shoestring budget, no crew or cast was paid, and all money went directly into what you see in camera. It features clothing from “Wildfang,” whose website tells us their brands style speaks to “ Streetwear-inspired style & fashion for badass women.” We used free software like blender, to achieve the best visual effect shots in the film, and it took over 30 days to render one of the many vfx shots across 5 computers. This film and its story about, maturity, aging, expectations, and the antagonizing forces we meet in the search of our true selves. This film is about love.