A short reflection by Shine Louise Houston.

PUT the NEEDLE on the RECORD is one in a series of shorts that I’ve been writing that fictionalize my early twenties, also inspired by my love of 70’s erotic cinema, especially Radley Metzger. Some of the stories that I’m writing are really explicit, while some of them are only mildly explicit, like PUT the NEEDLE on the RECORD.

The film is definitely more of an audio piece than a video piece. The driving force in this project is Terry’s monologue, also coupled with the looping soundtrack as Sharon puts the needle on the record over and over again, and the different songs like replay, but in different context.

It’s also about secrecy and ambiguity. There are blurred lines around what’s true and what’s not. We don’t really know if Terry’s story is real. We’re not too sure if Dale and Sharon, the giggly couple, are really trying to be a secret or not. We don’t really know if Lolo and Terry even care if they’re having sex on the floor.

What I’m exploring with PUT the NEEDLE on the RECORD is expanding a moment in time. It’s not a complicated plot. There’s no real character arc, there’s barely any conflict except maybe with Terry and Lolo, but really, it’s a study of a particular moment and situation between four people.

Shooting the sex scene was very different than the way we normally shoot the scenes for CrashPadSeries.com and previous features, primarily because we weren’t really shooting any action. The only thing I wanted to capture were the reaction shots. That’s mainly because then we’ll have narrative going over the image.

Also it’s supposed to be a very, very sneaky moment, or supposedly sneaky moment. So a lot of the audio from Dale, played by Drew Deveaux is muted out, to emphasize the sneakiness, but there are also times where the audio does come in and you can hear, so you kind of have to wonder: how sneaky are they really supposed to be? Do they know they’re being watched?

I’m pretty sure they know they’re being watched even though they’re trying to be sneaky. What’s supposed to be happening is, Sharon, played by Andre Shakti, is supposed to be giving Dale a hand job. And when we finally filmed the sex, since we’re only focusing on Dale’s face, we pretty much let them do whatever they wanted to do. So, they’re doing a lot more below the belt than what the story leads on. That’s also very, very different for us, because the scene is less about bits, and more about feeling Dale’s reaction.

Watch PUT the NEEDLE on the RECORD on PinkLabel.tv.