Gypsy 83 by Todd Stephens

Gypsy 83 is a movie following two main characters, Clive and Gypsy, both are characters within the Goth scene and find themselves trying to follow their own dreams by heading to New York City.

The movie begins with the credits rolling as a 180 degree spin captures the two main characters in motion, dancing with one another. The spinning occurs again within the film, because Gypsy dreams of spinning while on stage singing. She attempts this twice, the first time is unsuccessful and the second one is.

They travel across the country, so there are many scenes of nature within the film. Only two places are re-occuring throughout the film. Graveyards, which appear four times, and a rest stop they find themselves staying over night at. The graveyards appear in three different types of light, the first it's dusk, so the lighting on the figures as they move through the graveyards is very dramatic - which helps to give their period clothes more drama as well. The second is afternoon light, and the last is candlelight during the night.

Stephen's varies the light quite a bit in this film, ranging from tungsten and florescent, to early morning and dusk - and candle light appears a couple of times as well. The light changes help to give the viewer some insight as to how the characters might be feeling or the experiences that our occurring.

Tension during candlelight

The shots are comprised of: aerial, ground shots, half body, full body, close ups, and far away. All of these are used to switch up the flow of the film. When Gypsy first appears it's a ground shot and all we see are her boots as she exits her car to go to work. Farther through the film, we are looking up at Clive as he dances to The Cure on top of picnic tables within the rest stop area.

One quality about the film that I really enjoyed, was that Stephen's incorporated black and white film within the color. So there are scenes of them in the graveyard posing on gravestones through black and white film, as well as, a lot of the cross country highways and terrain. They even incorporated the sound of the film as it flows through the camera, a quality which I really enjoyed. It was a nice visual and auditory touch.

Stephen's uses hands, doors, and sounds to connect the frames together. So one character may exit in one scene, and another may enter a different environment at a different time in the next scene. This is evident when Gypsy goes back to see her father bringing home dinner. They connect hands as Gypsy is giving the photographs to a girl who used to make fun of her in school, as Gypsy gives her the photos and the girl gives her the money. There is one scene where Clive is in his bedroom and he turns on his sewing machine, and right as it begins to make noise it clips to another scene of noise, a car starting up.

Another quality I enjoyed about the film was that the characters, at times, seemed to bounce off of he frames - as though they couldn't be contained in the space. I really liked this as a contrast to still characters operating within the square of the frame - instead they played with it, by using their own energy and playfulness.