​​​​John Foust​

The Challenge: Create a story based around an existing poem.

Our Approach: The poem, Carol Ann Duffy's "Valentine", was chosen by Scott Beard (C.S.), while the approach of a deranged detective who falls in love with his victims was proposed by Tulani Foy (C.S.). I both featured in the video briefly as a detective, and also worked with Tulani to choose the right sense of grit and menace to the film. The two of us pulled actual crime scene photos to make it as realistically disturbing as possible. On top of that, I envisioned the black and white concept for the film, as well as many of the quick edits, particularly near the end of the video as our detective encounters his next case, and his next obsession. The music was also selected by me, and I carefully planend out the turning point for the music to go from somber, to increasingly sinister. Tulani came up with the idea of using Joel Mazmanian (C.T.) for the detective, due to his demeanor and behavior.