High Functioning (Proof of Concept)

Cassandra Alexa’s plan for her short film “High Functioning (Proof of Concept)” is to make a feature film. The proof of concept was screened in the Roma Short Film Festival and received an honorable mention at the Chicano Hollywood Film Festival. Cassandra is currently working towards a final filming version of the feature script then she will be figuring out funding and other logistics/pre-production. As soon as these aspects are ready, she aims to film the feature. Cassandra Alexa will reprise her roles as the character Ruby and the feature’s director, writer, and co-producer; she will provide music for the feature’s soundtrack and be heavily involved with costume and makeup for the feature. Cassandra plans to film her feature in her hometown, Everman, Texas, where the feature is set, and she plans to get her community involved in her film even at the level of helping with different aspects of production (acting as extras, catering, hair/nails/costuming/makeup, locations, etc.) as this film serves as a love letter to her hometown and to the Mexican and Black, lower-income community that makes her town so beautiful and filled with community. 

Cassandra Alexa's mission is to create film and music that uplift marginalized communities and create social change. Cassandra Alexa’s directing style is based on empathy, connection, emotion, and intuition, focusing on representation and activism, with the flare of her signature psychedelic and glam aesthetics. Cassandra’s work is inspired by her leftist and socialist values that carry decolonial, stewardship-based, cultural, and anti-capitalist frameworks. Cassandra believes representation on screen societally creates (both in film and in real life) a more understanding, inclusive, empathetic, and loving perception and behavior towards others and oneself, and provides an appreciated experience of seeing oneself/culture on screen. Cassandra showcases diverse stories, and she directs with empathy-, emotion-, connection-, and culture-based work.

Just as she does for her other films, Cassandra Alexa started off this film by writing a script that centers on diverse/ progressive characters, Ruby and Jordyn, giving them authentic personalities/ dialogue and a fun and unique story. Many of the stories have either a main or underlying focus on a social issue or social goal and dive into either a specific aspect of it or the larger picture of that issue/goal; she incorporates this into the script for this film as well. She then gathered her cast and crew, looking to work with people from marginalized communities, especially people with shared goals on representation and activism. She created a safe, friendly, creative, supportive, and inclusive environment at rehearsals and on set, played icebreaker games, and held conversations with her cast/crew. She directed the actors by guiding them to emotionally, circumstantially, and culturally connect to their characters, doing exercises like The Moment Before, sense-memory, personal connections, physical activities, walking through character intention/subtext/needs/goals/verbs, and the beats of the scenes, and letting the actors provide additions to the character. Cassandra worked to have a faster, comedy-style pacing and she wanted some comedic blocking, so she let her cast experiment in rehearsals until it felt right and was funny for the scene, especially for the ordering cheese sticks scene. She also worked with them while rehearsing to try to get the scenes as funny as they could be.

Something else she does in her films is create an emotional, empathetic, and often psychedelic aesthetic. To Cassandra, “psychedelic” is a film/music genre/technique that means taking the audience member/listener to another place, deeply connecting them to emotions, characters, story, the film’s world, or to themselves through the use of image, sound, and color, expanding their mind, emotions, and empathy. Cassandra talked to her DP and gaffer to create a specifically psychedelic aesthetic she was going for. She was really influenced by one of her favorite movies, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and she was going for a similar aesthetic. She showed examples to them and explained that she wanted the lighting and camera positions/ movement to help to get us to feel Ruby’s high and be more in her mind and world, and just to get the audience more in touch with the feeling of a stoner comedy. She wanted to distinguish between Jordyn’s world/ the cashier’s view and Ruby’s world and to emotionally provoke two different feelings when viewing them. This makes you understand Jordyn’s more responsible, wholesome, and anxiety-ridden personality/ world. This also helps you to understand the employee’s frustration/ annoyance. She carried out this aesthetic by blocking the cameras and actors as well.

Cassandra also put her efforts into small details like creating the practical effect of a strip club sign appearing outside of the car window by attaching a very small LED light sign to a blacked-out c-stand and positioning/ angling the sign to give the illusion of it being a big sign reflecting from a building, which goes along with her using 2 locations (which she obtained for free through connecting socially/ communally with these business owners) to serve as all 4 locations in the film and she used available resources and lighting to present these locations as locations she didn’t actually have access to. She also timed out and pre-wrote missed texts and phone calls from Chad, the head frat boy Ruby and Jordyn work for, which you can see if you pause the film when Jordyn checks her phone.

Music is a huge part of this film for Cassandra as it connects deeply to her culture and to other BIPOC cultures. She picked music for this Proof of Concept film by Latino and Black artists that would be heard in BIPOC cultures/ we would actually listen to (which is what she plans to do with the feature), as this importantly reflects her hometown which the film is set in. She also worked with her sound designer to create a psychedelic effect by making the music get louder/ more non-diegetic when it’s focused on Ruby, then diegetically playing softly from the restaurant radio speakers when we pull back to see Jordyn and the cashier’s point of view. This not only makes us experience Ruby vs Jordyn and the cashier’s point of view/ experience, but actually emulates a real-life effect of the drug, molly, where music, sounds, and visuals- which were brought to life with lighting and camera- are louder, brighter, more-detailed, and accentuated. (She will also be using psychedelic and hip-hop approaches to sound in her feature.) In production, she tried to use lighting, sound, and camera movement to make the film feel psychedelic throughout. 

Cassandra also spent a lot of time working with her editor and the rest of her post-production team on this project to get the edit as comedic and seamless as possible and to get the film to look and sound as psychedelic as possible.

Cassandra also served as the costume and makeup designer for this film. In all her projects, she likes to have a great commitment and involvement in the costume and makeup designs for her films. She incorporates her love for glam and experimental fashion and makeup and her value for culture in her costuming, makeup, and other production design elements or aesthetics.

Cassandra Alexa is a director, screenwriter, singer/rapper/songwriter, and actress. She is also the Founder/CEO (with a Creative Development Role) of Heart ERA, a film & music studio and activism organization.

Cassandra is a 24-year-old Mexican Indigenous American woman from Everman, Texas. Cassandra recently received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film & Television with a Concentration in Directing and a Minor in Screenwriting from DePaul University. She is located in Fort Worth, Texas.

God, her family, and friends serve as her life’s foundation.

Cassandra Alexa's short film “High Functioning (Proof of Concept)” was screened in the Roma Short Film Festival and received an honorable mention at the Chicano Hollywood Film Festival; it is planned to be expanded into a feature film. Cassandra recently made a commercial titled Cidercade- Cousinly Competition Commercial, which was a client project. Cassandra recently released her first album “the psychedelic introspection.”, which features 16 songs with 7 music videos, which she directed, starred in, and costume/makeup-designed.

She recently worked as a talent management intern at Venture Entertainment in West Hollywood.

Cassandra Alexa's mission is to create film that uplifts marginalized communities and creates social change.

Cassandra Alexa’s directing style is based on empathy, connection, emotion, and intuition, focusing on representation and activism, with the flare of her signature psychedelic and glam aesthetics. Cassandra’s work is inspired by her leftist and socialist values that carry decolonial, stewardship-based, cultural, and anti-capitalist frameworks. Cassandra believes representation on screen societally creates (both in film and in real life) a more understanding, inclusive, empathetic, and loving perception and behavior towards others and oneself, and provides an appreciated experience of seeing oneself/culture on screen. Cassandra showcases diverse stories, and she directs with empathy-, emotion-, connection-, and culture-based work.

Art is personal to Cassandra. Cassandra is very proud of her identity as a Mexican Indigenous American woman and strives to honor her identity through her films. Facing many hardships in her life (a near-death experience, health issues, different types of abuses, marginalized identity traits which have presented discriminations towards her such as racism, sexism, etc., poverty, the disadvantages presented with having learning disabilities, educational/professional systemic challenges, struggles with mental health, etc.) she addresses and aims to combat these issues through her work.

 Cassandra writes scripts that center on diverse/progressive characters (especially Latino/Indigenous and Black characters/stories), giving them authentic personalities/dialogue, and fun/unique stories. Many of the stories have either a main or underlying focus on a social issue or social goal and dive into either a specific aspect of it or the larger picture of that issue/goal. Education is a very important value to Cassandra and a big part of how she operates as a filmmaker; she aims to educate using art. She gathers a cast and crew from marginalized communities that have shared goals on representation and activism. She creates a safe, friendly, creative, supportive, and inclusive environment at rehearsals and on set and plays icebreaker games or holds conversations. She directs the actors by guiding them to emotionally, circumstantially, and culturally connect to their characters, doing exercises like The Moment Before, sense-memory, personal connections, physical activities, walking through character intention/subtext/needs/goals/verbs, and the beats of the scenes, and letting the actors provide additions to the character. She works on (often comedic/faster) pacing and blocking, letting her cast experiment in rehearsals until it feels right (and as funny as possible, if a comedy). To Cassandra, “psychedelic” is a film/music genre/technique that means taking the audience member/listener to another place, deeply connecting them to emotions, characters, story, the film’s world, or to themselves through the use of image, sound, and color, expanding their mind, emotions, and empathy.

Cassandra works with her DP, gaffer, and post-production team, to create this emotional and empathetic (or psychedelic) aesthetic by blocking the camera (camera movement and positioning), creatively using lighting and sound, incorporating psychedelic elements, editing as seamlessly (or comically) as possible, and incorporating psychedelic or hip-hop techniques and cultural connections in the sound edit/sound design. Music is a huge part of film for Cassandra, as music connects deeply to her/BIPOC culture(s). She often picks music by Latino and Black artists and provides her own music for her films. She likes to involve her Mexican, Black, lower-income, hometown community in her stories and production aspects (catering, hair/nails/costuming/makeup, locations, etc.). She tries to be resourceful and use what she has access to. Cassandra acts in and produces many of her films and is very involved with costuming/makeup (often designing herself), incorporating her love for glam and experimental looks. She also likes to see this aesthetic in her film’s production design and emphasize appreciation of culture and identity, both in costume/makeup and in production design. As an actress who is receiving acting training herself, the more she learns about acting, the more she understands how to be a better director, and vice versa. She puts effort into the small details of her films, practical effects, or bringing ideas or effects to life. She aims to create the world she wants to see inside her studio, Heart ERA, through Heart ERA’s actions in its community and in society, through the environment she creates on set, and in the world/characters/story (with an emphasis on representation/exposure, activism, and education) inside the script.

STILLS

Director
Cassandra Alexa

Written by
Cassandra Alexa

Co-Producers
Cassandra Alexa and Mikayla Hill

Cast

Jordyn
Zoe-Anna Wilson

Ruby
Cassandra Alexa

Employee
Brooklyn Durs

Bartender
Jason Krause

Valet
Ryder Dean McDaniel

Extras
Sean Simmons
Arabella Hall

Crew

Assistant Director
Dillon Fina

Reshoot Director of Photography
Jules Williams

Boom/ Sound Mixer
Dionysios Siopsis

Costume and Makeup
Cassandra Alexa

Production Assistants
Emily Jonas
Christina-Grace Dixon
Joni Murphy
Arabella Hall

Craft Services
Cassandra Alexa

Script Supervisor
Alexandro Pacheco

1st AC
Ethan Tran
Cathy Bowman
Vincent Brown

2nd AC
Daniel J. Turner
Peter Conroy

Gaffer
Mycah Cassell

Key Grip
Daniel J. Turner
Foster Landis

Locations Provided by
Chris Johnston
Jose Jimenez III
Ruth Dominguez

Location Scout
Cassandra Alexa

Props
Cassandra Alexa
Chris Johnston

Behind the Scenes Photographers
Nick Collis
Mikayla Hill
Joni Murphy
Arabella Hall
Emily Jonas
Christina-Grace Dixon

Editor
Max Held

Sound Designer
Hao Ha

Sound Editor
Hao Ha

Colorist
Tyler Cameron

VFX Artist
Jon-nel Allen

Director of Photography
Corey Joon Clark

Camera Operator
Corey Joon Clark

Catering
Rosie’s Sidekick Sandwich Shop & Catering
Jimmy John’s Sandwiches

Special thanks to
Tío Albert
Chris Johnston
Cheesie’s Pub and Grill
Jose Jimenez III
Carnicerias Jimenez
Ruth Dominguez
Rosie’s Sidekick Sandwich Shop & Catering-
Freddy Pecoraro; Owner
Frank Storniolo; General Manager
Ambarien Alqadar