Director's Commentary

Although HotD2 would be my first official flick, I would consider PMS my first proper movie because it came closer to my original vision than HotD2 as I was able to edit PMS with digital technology! With digital non-linear editing I was able to make tighter and more accurate fast-cuts in the video, insert properly synched sound effects and include high-res images and digital special effects (such as my favorite at the time: the Lens Flare!). After the torturous ordeal of working with that god-forsaken analogue suite, digital editing is like a total god-send. Not only was the cueing more accurate, but adding additional layers of sound and color correction didn't affect the end result's quality at all! I said this once and I'll say it again: going from analogue editing to digital editing is like going from hand-jobs to blow-jobs. Like what my ex told me once: After you've gotten head, there's simply no going back!

Technological issues aside, PMS was also a step up from HotD2 because I was now writing a completely original story as opposed to adapting an existing story. I had to create totally new characters from scratch and put them in a situation that I also had to devise from scratch. What began as a psycho-thriller that was highly influenced by Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers evolved through several rewrites into an end result that was more like an extended duel sequence that more closely resembled something out of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

During the production I made a decision to start including hand-drawn comic frames as the basis of the video, using the footage shot of Megan kicking my ass as just a way to convey the complex fight scenes. After all, I felt that the whole storyline of PMS warriors was a little bit silly, and kind of reminiscent of Japanese anime and video game storylines.

So as a homage to them, I not only included the comic frames but also made all the dialogue Japanese with English subtitles. Which turned out to be a two-edged sword… it had a nice effect, but being so dialogue heavy the subtitles turned out to be really small and hard to read. Oh, and the Japanese samples got really repetitive and annoying really quickly. I don't think many people know what it's about, as they'd stop reading the subtitles about 3 minutes into the video.

Which kinda sucks, because in the end the theme of PMS was lost on most people as they didn't understand what the fuck was going on. There actually was a point to it, you know? I didn't just call it PMS just for the sake of being offensive (and some people thought it was, to the point that a lecturer called me "a homophobic misogynist"… which really hurt because at the time my two best friends were a homosexual and a woman)… if you actually follow the dialogue and shit, it was actually quite pro-female and was very sympathetic to the female curse of PMS. I wrote PMS after a time when I was very close to 2 very special women (that I ended up dedicating the video to) and I found out just how painful and tormenting that shit is, and I got quite shitty at how guys usually think of PMS as a joke. Unfortunately, I don't think my message got through to most people due to the shitty subtitles.