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| Shefali Vasudevan |
“A lot of the film and television I saw growing up was very male-centric,” says Vasudevan. “When I went to film school and realized how heavily male the industry was, I knew I really wanted to create something of my own to combat it.
“The term ‘The Female Gaze’ is a twist on the term ‘Male Gaze,’ where everything in art, entertainment and news has been told strictly from the male perspective up until recent years. We wanted to flip that and make the narrative about women and how they view the world.”
Vasudevan approached Godwin, her Emerson classmate with whom she shared an improv class, with her idea of telling their stories in a unique way and she was instantly on board. “I had worked with Shefali before, and have always respected and trusted her vision,” says Godwin. “I was also excited about being involved with a web series that honestly portrayed a variety of stories about men and women that I could relate to.”
Asked if it’s easy to relate to the situations her character, Jen, has found herself in, Godwin said that while her character “is not directly based on myself, she is in a lot of situations that I’ve also found myself in.
“For example, figuring out where she stands in a relationship versus being single and navigating jobs. I feel like I’ve been able to relate to every part of Jen, even if I haven’t been in her exact scenario. I still feel the same emotions and make the same discoveries that she does.
“For me, it was pretty easy to get inside Jen’s head, as a lot of what she experiences is similar to what I’ve gone through as I navigate my 20s. It’s a release for me to be able to bring my current awareness from personal situations and go back into that situation as Jen who’s experiencing it for the first time.
“Shefali has a really great honest writing style, but she also loves when actors make the role their own. During the rehearsals she encouraged us to improvise, which we sometimes added lines from, and tweak the dialogue to sound a little more like how our character would say it. It’s such a great experience to work with Shefali, because she puts so much into her work and then opens it up for collaboration to make the best product possible. That’s the ultimate dream!”
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| Camra Godwin |
“For example, figuring out where she stands in a relationship versus being single and navigating jobs. I feel like I’ve been able to relate to every part of Jen, even if I haven’t been in her exact scenario. I still feel the same emotions and make the same discoveries that she does.
“For me, it was pretty easy to get inside Jen’s head, as a lot of what she experiences is similar to what I’ve gone through as I navigate my 20s. It’s a release for me to be able to bring my current awareness from personal situations and go back into that situation as Jen who’s experiencing it for the first time.
“Shefali has a really great honest writing style, but she also loves when actors make the role their own. During the rehearsals she encouraged us to improvise, which we sometimes added lines from, and tweak the dialogue to sound a little more like how our character would say it. It’s such a great experience to work with Shefali, because she puts so much into her work and then opens it up for collaboration to make the best product possible. That’s the ultimate dream!”
When Vasudevan started creating “The Female Gaze,” she was writing from her own perspective and personal experiences as a 24-year-old (she just turned 25 this month) and with an 18-to-30-year-old audience in mind. She said, “I think a lot of the themes are universal.
Godwin, 25, agrees, saying “I think a lot of people 18-30 would relate directly to what each character is going through, but the emotions that our characters feel transcend age groups.
“Everyone has an idea of what heartbreak, excitement, love and confusion (to name a few) feels like!”
In developing “The Female Gaze,” Vasudevan, who earned a BFA in Film Production from Emerson College in Boston, originally hoped to learn more about filmmaking. She also became a central character in her own web series. The first series run of seven episodes included titles such as “First Time,” “F**kboy,” “Damsel,” and “Best Friends.”
In the fourth episode, “Damsel,” Vasudevan’s character, Priya, shares an intimate on-the-mouth kiss with her friend, Silvia (played by Avery Richardson). When asked if there was any sense of awkwardness, or if it was about Priya’s empowerment, acting upon her desires – perhaps figuring out her sexuality – she expressed, “I was writing this scene based on the experience of some of my friends and myself. What a lot of people today don’t really understand is that sexuality can be a little more complicated to navigate and not all black and white. It can also be something that is repressed in a lot of us because for so long in our lives we were told we had to think a certain way. Older generations tend to think that you can only like men or you can only like women. But I think for some people the attraction is based on person to person and relationship to relationship.”
Vasudevan suggested that Priya’s character “has entertained the thought of being with a girl, but until this moment in her life she has never met a girl in real life that she was attracted to. So, in the previous episode, she was with a man she felt attracted to,” but then “she feels so strongly toward Silvia that she has to act on it! I think by the end of the series, Priya realizes she has to explore this about herself before she can be in an open and honest relationship with either a man or a woman.”
While the final product of each six-to-seven minute episode comes off as a very smooth viewing experience, there’s plenty that goes into the creation and production. “We shot everything episode to episode,” said Vasudevan. The music heard in each episode comes from a variety of Emerson alumni (GUPPY, Pool Boys, Love Under the Sun) and Vasudevan said each were kind and gracious about contributing their music to the series.
“Learning how to self-produce my own work outside of college was difficult,” Vasudevan admits, “but I started to form a community and creat a good work flow this project.”
In the fourth episode, “Damsel,” Vasudevan’s character, Priya, shares an intimate on-the-mouth kiss with her friend, Silvia (played by Avery Richardson). When asked if there was any sense of awkwardness, or if it was about Priya’s empowerment, acting upon her desires – perhaps figuring out her sexuality – she expressed, “I was writing this scene based on the experience of some of my friends and myself. What a lot of people today don’t really understand is that sexuality can be a little more complicated to navigate and not all black and white. It can also be something that is repressed in a lot of us because for so long in our lives we were told we had to think a certain way. Older generations tend to think that you can only like men or you can only like women. But I think for some people the attraction is based on person to person and relationship to relationship.”
Vasudevan suggested that Priya’s character “has entertained the thought of being with a girl, but until this moment in her life she has never met a girl in real life that she was attracted to. So, in the previous episode, she was with a man she felt attracted to,” but then “she feels so strongly toward Silvia that she has to act on it! I think by the end of the series, Priya realizes she has to explore this about herself before she can be in an open and honest relationship with either a man or a woman.”
While the final product of each six-to-seven minute episode comes off as a very smooth viewing experience, there’s plenty that goes into the creation and production. “We shot everything episode to episode,” said Vasudevan. The music heard in each episode comes from a variety of Emerson alumni (GUPPY, Pool Boys, Love Under the Sun) and Vasudevan said each were kind and gracious about contributing their music to the series.
“Learning how to self-produce my own work outside of college was difficult,” Vasudevan admits, “but I started to form a community and creat a good work flow this project.”
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| Road trippin’ with “The Female Gaze.” |
Indeed, Vasudevan changed the dynamic, and in doing so, she confesses that having a majority female crew also brings a different energy to the set. “There is a lot less ego involved – and a lot of creativity,” she said. “I have been on some really great male-run sets, but in general, on female-run sets everyone is just there to work and do a good job.”
When she was asked if there have been an production obstacles, Vasudevan said, “PLENTY! But I love it. My background from school is directing and writing, but more recently I decided to learn more about producing and acting.
“Producing has been such a fun way to use my problem solving skills. For the cafe episode (shot in a Le Pain Quotidien in Studio City), I actually talked to a few different cafes and Le Pain Quotidien was just the most responsive, affordable and flexible to work with! Lunch was also included in our space rental fee, which was incredible. I’m still dreaming about their chocolate hazelnut spread.
“The biggest obstacle was definitely the final episode of the first season and coordinating everyone on that set. I had a lot of help from my good friend and co-director on that episode, Caroline Ullman. The main issues came with coordinating actors and making sure we got through all of the scenes we needed to film in such a short amount of time. But the team of filmmakers we worked with were so incredible and patient with us! We ended up eating everything we needed and then some.”
When she was asked if there have been an production obstacles, Vasudevan said, “PLENTY! But I love it. My background from school is directing and writing, but more recently I decided to learn more about producing and acting.
“Producing has been such a fun way to use my problem solving skills. For the cafe episode (shot in a Le Pain Quotidien in Studio City), I actually talked to a few different cafes and Le Pain Quotidien was just the most responsive, affordable and flexible to work with! Lunch was also included in our space rental fee, which was incredible. I’m still dreaming about their chocolate hazelnut spread.
“The biggest obstacle was definitely the final episode of the first season and coordinating everyone on that set. I had a lot of help from my good friend and co-director on that episode, Caroline Ullman. The main issues came with coordinating actors and making sure we got through all of the scenes we needed to film in such a short amount of time. But the team of filmmakers we worked with were so incredible and patient with us! We ended up eating everything we needed and then some.”
Asked what the reaction from friends and family has been, Vasudevan said her family has been extremely supportive of the entire process. “I told my mom about what the story was going to be about a long time ago,” she recalled, “and when I started making the project I felt so insecure about it.
“There was one day when I was on the phone with her talking about how nervous I was, and she told me, ‘This is so incredible what you’re doing. You’re creating a body of work for yourself, of what you’re like right now, of what your friends are like, of what you’re experiencing, and you’re always going to remember it because you have this series.’ And that made me really happy and more confident about the project because yeah, maybe not a lot of people will see it, but it is such a truly vulnerable expression of my life right now and I’m excited to have that.”
Godwin added, “When we first put it out, there’s always a sense of anxiousness because you want people to be able to connect with it like you did, and all that anxiousness has melted away for me now!”
“There was one day when I was on the phone with her talking about how nervous I was, and she told me, ‘This is so incredible what you’re doing. You’re creating a body of work for yourself, of what you’re like right now, of what your friends are like, of what you’re experiencing, and you’re always going to remember it because you have this series.’ And that made me really happy and more confident about the project because yeah, maybe not a lot of people will see it, but it is such a truly vulnerable expression of my life right now and I’m excited to have that.”
With “The Female Gaze,” Vasudevan is emphasizing storytelling from a woman’s perspective. “I want people to see that women are messy and complicated and annoying and beautiful and weird, and that’s okay!
“I also hope that the stories resonate with people. Getting responses from people telling me that they related to the characters was incredible and more than what I thought I would get out of this experience initially.”
Find “The Female Gaze” on social media:
On Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/thefemalegazeseries/
On Twitter @TFGSeries
On Instagram @thefemalegazeseries
Credits: “The Female Gaze” videos, courtesy of YouTube. Individual photos of Shefali Vasudevan and Camra Godwin by Lauren Cabanas. Cover photo and Road Trip episode photos by Zachary Shea Mills. Behind the Scenes of the final episode “This Is Not A Party” photo by Ariel Skovera.
Find “The Female Gaze” on social media:
On Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/thefemalegazeseries/
On Twitter @TFGSeries
On Instagram @thefemalegazeseries
Credits: “The Female Gaze” videos, courtesy of YouTube. Individual photos of Shefali Vasudevan and Camra Godwin by Lauren Cabanas. Cover photo and Road Trip episode photos by Zachary Shea Mills. Behind the Scenes of the final episode “This Is Not A Party” photo by Ariel Skovera.
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