LBB Film Club: Sorry I Am Late, I Was Masturbating

 

Alena> I started to think about what I want to do as an artist and I realised that masturbation kind of makes sense. But I didn't know exactly what I could say about masturbation. It seems like everybody knows it. Then I came to Berlin. It was my first summer and I realised, no, I really needed a masturbation project in Berlin. 

I started to explore this topic more, read a lot about it and realised that even on social media, there isn't something specific educating girls about masturbation. 

Eventually, I found a really simple guide in a girls' magazine. It was a little bit hilarious, kind of stupid advice on how to do it. And I realised I wanted to tell people this – I didn't need to investigate too much. I just took these tips from the magazine. There were around 45 tips, I could fall asleep reading all of them. I realised what makes sense for me, and I just saved only seven or eight. 

Then I realised just making a list of tips is kind of boring. I was thinking it could be a little bit funny, but at the same time, make sense. I realised that I didn't want to be so serious about it and make a small, cute satire of this topic. Reading a lot helped me to start this story. 

I didn't know in the beginning that it should be a guide. I was trying to find my form and language. Then I noticed there are so many guides today. Like how to run, how to have 'a perfect body', how to find a boyfriend, how to have sex. You have guides on everything. I thought I could make fun of this a little bit. Step by step, I realised this is actually pretty obvious. It's so natural to make a guide. 

Alena> The backstory of this film is that I wanted to integrate everything I like. I like fashion, dancing, humour and female perspectives. I wanted to bring everything that I love and what I think I'm good at to one story. This is how I found my form, my language. 

Films are fun when you can integrate music parts, fantasy scenes, getting a vibe across, not just a storyline. And of course, the final tip, I think is actually very important, serious and funny at the same time – to develop your imagination, because it's important for your sex life as well. That was a really good part to bring in this dance, this kind of dream. 

I wanted to make sure this dream wasn't serious because I was a little bit tired of all these sexual topics being so serious – people kissing seriously, undressing each other seriously. I don't really feel it. I think that in real life sex sometimes is not how it is represented in the media. I decided to bring some comedy. That's why her fantasy's a little bit stupid. Also, she doesn't even know what she wants. That's why it's kind of random. But because I like aesthetics, I wanted to still make it beautiful. 

Alena> For me, the story starts from the character. You can have an idea, but it's like a dress – it works with a particular person. I knew exactly the type of person I was looking for. I was looking for a main character. She'll be naive, but at the same time a little bit naughty. This very unusual mix – very shy, and at the same time something dark, and very clumsy. I cast a lot of girls and it was not there. They were already so perfect, perfectly boring. The key decision was not to shoot this film if I didn't find the character. 

And then I found Linda [Rohrer]. Since I had a Zoom with her, I knew it was her. My heart started to beat faster. I really believe that a director should kind of fall in love with the actor. We had a nice talk, I explained everything. And I told her the film is called 'Sorry, I Am Late, I Was Masturbating'. 

A few days later, I came back to her and told her she got the role. She said, "Oh, thank you, but I'm not ready. I think it's too much for me." And I was like, "No, no, no, no, you don't understand. No porn, everything will be nice, I promise!" Basically she didn't trust me. I was just a stranger from Instagram. 

I gave her time and came back to her three or four months later with a detailed storyboard, shot by shot. She thought, actually, this is kind of cute. And the girl on the storyboard looks exactly like her. Of course, because I was asking [the storyboard artist] to draw you! This is how I found Linda and now she's pretty happy that she did it.

Alena> Yes, oh my god. There was so much trouble with this title.

Alena> It's even worse than sex. Suddenly, people were like, "Oh, no. Masturbation? Never did it before. Don't call us." But why? I had a lot of problems with this.

I was thinking Berlin is definitely a place to make any sexy project. But it was not that easy. This is maybe even a cliche about Berlin. But in the end not a lot of people were super hyped to work on this, until they met me and then I explained. So it was kind of my rose-tinted glasses.

Alena> The guru in the film who gives advice, Katja [Weitzenböck], is an actress and she'd just started her masterclass to be an intimacy coordinator on set. Actually she was even more interested in this part of the film because she wanted to try all her new skills. She was super involved in the process. However, you might see that the film actually doesn't have a lot of explicit scenes. But it was still an interesting experience for me because even when we had a simple kiss, she came to me and was like, "Alena, how do you want the kiss? Do you want them to touch each other? Do you want them to move their heads? Do you want it with tongue or without tongue?" As a director you're just like, "Aaaaand action. Kiss!" She's going into detail.

The moment when the guy goes between her legs was also discussed. Like, "OK, you start to kiss her here and here and here. Then you can touch him." She even asked her where she was OK for him to touch her. She said, "Here's OK, but here, please not." When you discuss zones, it becomes much less stressful for the actors. And I think that today it's very important, even if you're working with such simple moments, to respect each other's boundaries. So she really helped.

Alena> There was a moment in this film where everybody was kissing. The climax moment. I was a little bit shy on set. I think it was my mistake, maybe. I could not make it explicit. At the end, the footage of this climax moment was just like polite kissing. It was like the beginning of them making out, not the final steps. I was a little bit sad at this because I felt that I’d failed. I was like, "Shit, now it's not working. I need a climax. I need an orgasm scene." In the script everybody was kissing and then she has a climax and she kind of wakes up.

I was thinking and thinking, trying to make a benefit of this mistake. What if I add animation there? I didn't know what kind of animation at first. I was trying to think about hentai, the porn anime… Maybe too much. Then I thought of Sailor Moon. Let's just try the transition moment from Sailor Moon! I literally downloaded a Sailor Moon transition, it took 10 seconds, and edited it into my film. It worked even better than I could imagine.

I asked my friend, who is an animator, to do an animation paying tribute, really inspired by Sailor Moon. We wanted to make it very obvious, but not steal it. So this is how the animation came in.

It was to kill your darlings. The scene when the three of them were kissing was very beautiful, because we had these rails and the camera was moving around them. With the light it was really beautiful. But in the end, it didn't work. This is how I made this decision just to kill it. I think it's necessary. Every project has this small pain. You need to kill something to achieve a better story because at the end, it's not about one shot, or a particular scene. If it doesn't work you just need to cry a bit about this, accept it and move forward. It was a significant decision. The most important thing from this project is that I understand my own language. I started to be more confident that this is my product. I cannot be that sexy or serious. This project helped me to understand that I want to move even more deep into humour.

Alena> Exactly, yes. It was my first big art project abroad in Berlin. I met a lot of people and learned how to work with an international team, especially in this kind of scene. I think this project was really about fashion and art, not about delivering commercial results. It was an investigation. That was great.

In general I think my worries at the end were that I'd again made such a cute film. Because I wanted to make something sexy. I was like, "Yeah, I'm doing it. I'm doing it in Berlin." Then at the end, again, it's just beautiful. I was very worried about it not being explicit enough. Maybe this is how the industry and the media influence us. But I got really great support from my friends. They told me it's actually very cute that I'm doing it my way because we have so many sexy films. This is really my style and I have to save it, protect it and develop it. This actually was a good learning for me.

Basically it was an art project. It was not a commercial or music video, and the whole project was supported by a production company in Berlin, Doity, and also my savings. At the beginning we had considered the idea of collaborating with a brand or something. Unfortunately, when you're trying to reach companies and brands, they have so many levels of people making decisions, marketing strategies and budgets for the year, so it's really hard to just jump in the middle of the year and tell them we're making something. So we made it together as an independent art project, which I'm actually very happy about because nobody controlled me. It was my really honest vision. At the same time, I think that this kind of film could be really great for a brand.