Spencer Balter, FCLC 2024

MAJOR: English and Visual Arts

BIO: Spencer Balter is a filmmaker, photographer, and artist interested in pursuing stories that showcase human emotions and experiences in a new way. They have worked on many filmmaking and photography projects throughout their undergraduate career and are working towards a role in the film industry as a director.

PROJECT TITLE: Reflex

MENTOR: Casey Ruble and Mark Street, Department of Visual Arts 

ABSTRACT: Reflex is a short narrative film centered around Charlie, a young woman who has experienced a sexual assault. In the film, Charlie struggles to give voice to the things that happened to her, creating a disconnect that manifests as the hallucination of six figures, each representing a symptom or theme associated with trauma. It is not sustainable for Charlie to ignore her pain in this way, as she is quickly caught between the everyday and the surreal world she created for herself. The storyline also shows that support can come from unexpected places, when, in the end, Charlie finally vocalizes her pain with the help of a stranger. The point of this film is to demonstrate the way in which trauma can impact a person's life, as well as explore the utilization of the real and fantastical as an avenue for this investigation. This was mostly done through the character design of the creatures –individuals who appear fairly normal with specific abstractions like faces obscured with masks or altered with special effects makeup– in contrast to the realistic way in which Charlie's emotions and life are portrayed. This work, above all, seeks to tell a story of trauma in a realistic and understandable way in the hope of cultivating connection, community, and representation for others who might be suffering, and act as a response to the overly romanticized way in which sexual trauma is often portrayed in film.