Noah Hanson '22 uses a GoPro on a boom pole-turned-camera grip to capture underwater landscapes of a Minnesota lake.  Photos from Carleton College News.  

Few would go off the beaten path amid the brutal Minnesota winter for any reason, let alone storytelling. Yet that was precisely where Cinema and Media Studies (CAMS) major Noah Hanson ’22 found himself over winter break as he finished filming his comps.

Hanson is now in the process of editing “THE VANIFAR,” a short film of roughly eight-and-a-half minutes that he conceptualized, wrote and edited. He describes the project as “an eerie film about a woman going on a journey” through the titular Vanifar, an “enchanted forest” populated by “trapped spirits,” to “make a deal with a celestial being.” The story explores the woman’s past and present through numerous flashback sequences, drawing inspiration from “Twin Peaks”and Salvador Dali’s “Swans Reflecting Elephants.”

As the storyline of “THE VANIFAR”is intimately tied to nature, Hanson experiments with filming techniques that transform the everyday processes of nature into visual effects that enhance the story. Perhaps most notable is his use of a long pole, similar to a fishing rod, to lower a camera underwater and record footage from the bed of a lake. Hanson devised this concept while working on a previous project.

“I’m using the surface tension of water as a special effect,” Hanson said, “blending it with images of a forest to make [the scene] come to life.”

Filming “THE VANIFAR”was a four-day ordeal that brought Hanson, his lead actor and a microphone operator some 281 miles north to Lutsen, Minnesota, where they intended to make several treks along Lake Superior and through the mountains. Nature, however, immediately moved to rewrite the script.

Filming “THE VANIFAR” in Lutsen, Minnesota.

“The first day we got there, it was… a crazy blizzard,” Hanson said. “You could barely see anything—it was like a sheet of white in front of you.”

The surprise blizzard jettisoned Hanson’s plans: The aforementioned mountain scenes became substantially more difficult to film as intended when the crew woke up that morning to find “almost 20 inches of snow on the ground” coming “up to [their waists].” Losing a prop in the snow meant potentially never finding it. Clearly, the film could not proceed according to its original script.

With a constrictive timeframe and a student budget, Hanson lacked the option of relocating or postponing filming. Thankfully, he was prepared.

“You have to come up with creative ways to overcome challenges [and] be more creative with how you approach storytelling” when working with limited resources, Hanson said. “I took a loss… but I gained a crazy blizzard and a frozen lake. [I thought,] ‘what can I do with this?’”

He quickly retooled the film to fit its new setting.

“The night before we filmed, I went over the script and was like ‘okay, we’re gonna film the entire ending scene in this blizzard,’” Hanson said. “I think that rolling with those punches… in the time that we had was something… we did well.”

Now that filming is complete, Hanson believes “THE VANIFAR”has only benefited from the challenges it has faced.

“[The film] highlights the isolation of a character… at her most vulnerable,” he said. “The weather and the circumstances around her bring that out to the forefront… it’s just her in this vast nothingness. I think the audiences will get that feeling when they watch my comps.”

Hanson takes care to acknowledge his fellow CAMS majors.

Noah Hanson and collaborators filming “THE VANIFAR” in Lutsen, Minnesota.

“We really came together as a team after not being able to get to know each other very well over the past two years,” he said. “We’ve become a tight-knit community that supports each other however we can.”

“THE VANIFAR” will be available on Hanson’s YouTube channel, MadeByNONI, as well as at the comps symposium during Spring Term, and at a potential CAMS film festival later this term.

Comps is a capstone project that every Carleton senior completes in their major. It surpasses their previous coursework in scope and complexity and involves working closely with a faculty adviser. Officially, the project is called an “integrative exercise,” but Carls know it as “comps,” — a holdover from when the senior capstone experience was a comprehensive exam.

To read the original story and more from Carleton College, visit https://www.carleton.edu/news/