“Azrael”
"A Super-8 film I made (instead of writing a term paper) for a class on 'Death In Modern Literature' at UC Riverside when I was 20 years old. 'Azrael' is an Angel of Death that severs the soul from the body when one dies (or so I read somewhere). The film unfolds from sunrise to sunset following two robed figures (Mr. & Mrs. Death, played by Sid Gossett and Kim Brawner) as they collect various souls (leaving their physical bodies behind) to be transported to the train station in their 1965 Dodge Dart. The interlude in the snow is meant to be a memory of Mrs. Death from her youth. The running man (played by Bill Wolfs) is at first seen running away from Death until rejected and then is seen running towards the couple. Other souls were played by Darrin Barney, Esther Gossett (Sid's mom) and my little brother and sister Robert and Carol Doucette. A deleted sequence where the collected souls are taken to a drive-thru Jack-In-The-Box for a late afternoon snack is included at the end (I thought it maybe a bit too comedic for the film's overall mood), along with a few outtakes involving a flat tire on a mountain road and some premature 'awakenings'. The music consists of four pieces: Beethoven's 7th Symphony 2nd Movement, the Russian folk song from Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, the Arabian Dance from The Nutcracker Suite and a track from Hitchcock's Spellbound by Miklós Rózsa featuring a theremin.
The beautiful Super-8 transfer was created from the original Kodachrome 40 footage by Video Conversion Experts of Chandler, Arizona. They also did a grain reduction pass. I did some additional color correction and stabilization in After Effects, but all dissolves and speed changes were accomplish in-camera using my then-new Nizo S800." —Andrew Doucette, https://vimeo.com/154103801
