mtheory media

jenée muyeau

Film/Video

Watch a curated selection of some of my film and video work here. This selection of 5 videos, edited for time for this portfolio, includes some of my earliest student films, my favorite Emmy-nominated episode of Days of our Lives, and an example of my most recent foray into learning Unreal Engine through Epic’s Certified Connectors Filmmaker’s Program courses.

The Once and Future King, 2024

Original Format: ProRes 442 HQ

Original TRT: 7:00

Selects TRT: 3:10

 

Role: Unreal Engine Artist/Editor

 

I created this sequence using Unreal Engine. The initial Unreal Engine work was completed in an Epic Certified Connectors Filmmaker’s Program (an 8 week course at CG Pro). This was my first experience with Unreal Engine.

 

The Once and Future King sequence represents a new beginning for me creatively, both as a visual artist and a storyteller. New beginnings bring new tools and new ways of thinking, yet are often rooted in the past, and so it is here.

 

As the course was only eight weeks and primarily focused on introducing environment design and character animation within Unreal Engine, we were encouraged to use a technique known as “kitbashing” in Unreal Engine circles. Kitbashing is where an Unreal artist uses 3D assets created by other artists and sold (or made available for free) on a marketplace to create wholly new environments and characters in which to stage a unique story or game. This brought me back to my early student filmmaking days, when I used found footage to create new works (see Sleep and Boris below). The music in this sequence is from Loreena McKennitt, The Mask and Mirror, “The Mystic’s Dream.”

 

Although I did not create the individual assets you see in this sequence, I intentionally placed and often modified each asset. I fell utterly in love with building and lighting environments and being able to animate everything – objects, lights, camera. I got a little carried away with my newfound ability to animate and move the camera through space (like every film student since the beginning of time!). I created a four-minute “oner,” which I have shortened for this sequence.

 

Since the course was quite dense and fast-moving, I wanted to keep the story simple and the project’s scope achievable, so I went with some of the earliest stories of my childhood: the legends of King Arthur and Merlin. My choice of story also made it easier to source assets, as there are ample medieval assets available for Unreal Engine. My design approach was to sketch an outline of an animated short series and place my class project as the opening sequence within that framework.

 

The process of creating this small-scale project reconnected me with my younger creative self and has set me on a new path of learning animation and storytelling from a new perspective. I plan to continue using Unreal Engine to explore real-time animation narratives, build virtual production elements, and create pre-visualization sequences.

Days of our Lives, 2013

Original Format: HD Broadcast TV

Original TRT: 37:00

Selects from Air Master TRT: 3:38

 

Role: Editor/Colorist/Post Supervisor

 

Director: Steven Williford

Post Producer/Supervising Editor: Lugh Powers

Executive Producer: Lisa De Cazotte

Starring: Joseph Mascolo, Lauren Koslow, Drake Hogestyn, (and extended ensemble cast)

 

Days of our Lives supervillain, Stefano DiMera, is shot! But who shot Stefano?

 

This is one of my all-time favorite episodes of Days of our Lives. It was produced while I was still early in my tenure on Days, a junior editor, and was one of the first episodes that I worked on throughout the entire editorial process. It was also my first  Emmy-nominated episode, although it did not win.

 

The story is constructed like an Agatha Christie novel meets the Dallas “Who shot JR?” episode. Any one of half a dozen characters could have shot Stefano. The show unfolds as they each present themselves at our villain’s lair expressly to shoot him, but we are never sure who actually does shoot him – at least not in this episode!

 

I assembled the first cut of the show, then implemented the executive producer’s notes before turning it over to my supervising editor, Lugh Powers. Lugh worked closely with the episode’s director, Steven Williford, to produce the final cut. They both graciously allowed me to be in the room and be a part of that process. 

 

The episode was beautifully lit and shot. It was a night show, with tons of rain – a massive challenge for the production team, which they pulled off perfectly and to great effect. After the episode was scored and mixed, I did a final QC and color-grading pass before delivering it to the network for broadcast.

 

Working on this episode, and on Days of our Lives in general, I learned the true creative power of a strong, capable, and collaborative team with a shared purpose. Our production and post production teams were perfectly in sync and created a true gem with this show.

 

In my twelve years on Days of our Lives, I made the journey from nascent junior editor to Emmy award-winning editor. During that time, I was personally involved in editing and delivering over 3,000 episodes of broadcast content.

Bitter Weather, 2004

Original Format: Shot on 35mm film/Mastered on DigiBeta

Original TRT: 5:42

Selects TRT: 1:58

 

Role: Editor

 

Writer/Director: Maggie Miller

Producer: Lara Martin

Cinematographer: Hannah Beadman

Starring: J. Scott Hardman, Zoe Lawrence, and Rachel Malkenhorst

 

Bitter Weather unfolds as four characters in parallel universes connect through dreamscape, artwork, advertisement and science.

 

Bitter Weather is an experimental short that I edited in collaboration with writer/director/visual artist Maggie Miller. Maggie is an exacting and precise artist; she does extensive, detailed pre-production planning. Yet she is also always an open and engaging collaborator, and a true joy to work with as an editor. Her work is meticulously designed, beautiful, and thought-provoking. 

 

Editing Bitter Weather, I learned that the collaborative relationship between editor and director is built on trust, respect, and common purpose. It’s a magical, sacred thing. There is no room for ego in the cutting room, only the work. I hope you enjoy this short as much as we enjoyed creating it!

Boris, 2001

Original Format: 16mm

Original TRT: 28:00

Selects TRT: 4:22

 

Role: Editor

 

Writer/Director: Francesca Galesi

Producer: Aare Tilk

Cinematographer: John Rotan

Starring: Yevgeni (Eugene) Lazarev, Irene DiBari, and Ilia Volok

 

Boris is a former scientist, an engineer, and a widower. In 1986, while working on the USSR/Russian space station Mir, he secretly scratches his wife’s name on the outside. In 2001 Los Angeles, an unemployed and behind on his rent Boris, has his telescope confiscated by his landlady’s son, just as he learns that Mir will be crashed into the ocean. Boris needs to reconcile with his landlady, Rosie, and get his telescope back in time to see Mir fall from the sky and say goodbye to his wife. Boris is a love story.

 

Boris is one of two of my thesis films, completed as part of my Master of Fine Arts graduation requirements for The American Film Institute Conservatory’s Editing Program in 2001. In my time at the AFI, I learned about the nuance of performance and the delicate interplay between performance and story. The art of editing, for me, is about the dance between the two. I also learned that sometimes the best editorial choice is to not cut, but to hold a shot for performance. I brought my love of montage to this film through the opening title sequence, where we intercut our own footage with historical stock footage, setting the stage for our story.

 

I have included the film’s opening title montage and the final scene.

 

I still love Boris. Everyone on our team did a fantastic job, especially our writer/director, Francesca Galesi, but we were so incredibly fortunate in our cast. Editing Boris, I learned the power of a simple dialogue scene; two people connecting in a truthful moment. 

Sleep, 1991

WARNING: VIEWER DISCRETION

GRAPHIC IMAGES OF HOLOCAUST VICTIMS

 

Original Format: 16mm Film (with optical soundtrack)

Original TRT: 3:44

Short Version TRT: 1:48

 

Role: Writer/Producer/Researcher/Opticals/Editor

 

This is one of my first films as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona in the early 1990s. I had just discovered Ken Jacobs and his use of “found footage” to create new works, and become obsessed. I utilized our film department’s rarely used optical printer to photographically copy (one painful frame at a time) select clips found through research in our campus’ 16mm film library collection to create Sleep (with both my professor’s and the head film librarian’s permission). I used our film animation camera stand set-up for titles and interstitials.

 

The result is this short film that I intended to speak out against the rise of neo-nazism, the Klu Klux Klan, and other white supremacist groups on campus and in the US at large. I wanted to shake people awake and dispel, what seemed to me at the time, the general complacency of those who insisted such crimes against humanity could never happen again. In most of the intervening years, I’ve felt that this work was childish and undeveloped, perhaps alarmist, even unclear, at best. Now, it feels frighteningly prescient.

 

I intercut clips from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, several other documentaries, and a nursery rhyme I wrote, with voice over of Adolph Hitler delivering his speech at Nuremberg, and music from Joe Satriani’s Surfing with the Alien, “Hill of the Skull.“

 

I am, much like Alain Resnais and the other filmmakers of Night and Fog, still disturbed by these images and the story they tell, and feel a deep responsibility to the victims whose images I used. I also believe we must look so that we can truly see and be spurred to fight tyranny and genocide whenever and wherever it occurs.

 

This film has only ever been screened in academic settings, and in my role as a student, and now here. I include it here as an example of some of my earliest work, to show the whole arc of my story as a filmmaker, storyteller, and editor. This film is where I began.