16mm Film · RISD Film Practices · 2023

The Saver's Mask

A 16mm psychological chase film about desperation, restlessness, and the frightening speed of an inner life with nowhere to land.

RISD FAV · Film Practices

Role

Director · Cinematographer · Editor

Year

2023

Format

16mm · Kodak Tri-X Reversal

Camera

Bolex

Course

RISD Film Practices

Guidance

Ramón Rivera-Moret · Carter (TA)

The Idea

A chase through the self

The Saver's Mask is a psychological chase film about desperation and the frightening speed of an inner life with nowhere to land. A man moves through Providence with manic, almost ritual urgency — running through a courtyard, stopping to touch the grass and bushes, cutting through an alleyway — until he reaches a church and receives the mask.

Bought from a Savers thrift store, the mask became the film’s central emblem: the villainous double inside the self, the evil twin we carry privately and meet only when tension becomes unbearable.

A 16mm frame of the character running up the steps into a white-columned church — 16mm frame — the character reaches the church, the film’s final threshold.

Process · Shooting 16mm

Every second was material

Shot on a Bolex on Kodak Tri-X reversal stock, this was my first serious encounter with analog filmmaking — learning to read light, trust the meter, protect the exposure, and compose within the hard limits of a finite roll. There was no overshooting and no digital forgiveness; every frame had to be a decision.

I scouted Providence for spaces that could double as the character’s mental state — courtyards, fire-escape alleyways, a castle-like tower, and finally the white-columned church. Each location became an emotional threshold, pulling him deeper into confrontation with himself.

A white New England church with a tall clock-tower steeple — The church — where the mask is received.

A large spreading tree over a curving red-brick path beside a clapboard building — The courtyard where the run begins.

A graffiti building wall with a black fire escape over a rubble alley lane — A fire-escape alleyway — one of the charged passages between locations.

A crenellated castle-like tower building on a wet Providence street — A castle-like tower, scouted for its ominous scale.

A narrow cobblestone passage between a dark-shingled house and a yellow clapboard house — A narrow cobblestone passage between houses.

A historic deep-red clapboard house down a garden path — Old-Providence architecture — the analog-era texture that suits 16mm.

The Emblem

A villain bought from Savers

The mask itself — still on its thrift-store packaging — anchored the whole film. On screen it reads as the evil twin surfacing; off screen it was a five-dollar object that taught me how a single prop can carry an entire psychology.

A red-and-black demon mask held in hand, still on its Savers retail packaging — The Saver’s Mask, still on its thrift-store tag.

A dark 16mm frame of the glistening mask barely visible in shadow — 16mm frame — the mask emerging from the dark.

Every shot had weight because every second was material — the camera forced me to make decisions with intention.

Artist Statement

Reflection

The Saver’s Mask was one of the first projects where filmmaking stopped feeling abstract and started feeling physical. I shot it on 16mm Kodak Tri-X Reversal Film, which meant every second mattered. There was no endless reset button. I had to meter the light, commit to the framing, work with the actor, and accept that once the film moved through the camera, the decision existed.

The story is simple: a character moves through Providence with this restless, almost ritual urgency, running through courtyards and alleyways until he reaches a church and receives a mask I had bought at Savers. But the mask became more interesting than the object itself. It started to feel like the other version of the character—the private double that becomes visible when pressure builds for too long.

What I remember most is how much the locations began to participate. Grass, concrete, alleys, the church—they were not backgrounds. They became stages in the character’s internal movement. His body was basically the edit: run, stop, touch something, search, accelerate again.

More than anything, this was my first serious lesson in directing. I learned that directing is not just deciding where the camera goes. It is communicating a feeling, shaping movement, responding to an actor, and building a world under pressure.

The film is rough, but I like that about it. It feels urgent because I was learning urgently. Looking back, The Saver’s Mask feels like the moment cinema became something I wanted to keep chasing.

16mm frame of a house with an external white staircase and two figures in dark coats — 16mm frame — figures gathering beneath an external staircase in Providence.

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