In Retrospect and Rationale (Part 2)

I think the best way to sum up my very original story idea... was that I wanted to start with a very basic plot (I ended up with a party), something so basic it could mean absolutely anything or nothing at all, but something that if asked about, the audience could say "It was about this... I guess". Then I wanted to take that basic framework and throw every single bizarre image I could think into the mix, an idea so heavily influenced by Discordianism is makes me sick to my stomach. The ultimate goal there being to confuse and entertain the audience.

The binaural beats began to lose importance as the process went along I think. Mainly because I realised no one at a festival of sorts would be wearing headphones, let alone all of them. Also because after playing around with them I realised their effects didn't really sink in for about 10 minutes of listening, and it became evident early on that my film would not exceed 5 minutes in length. The theta wave pulses though, while they didn't have the desired neurological effect, still worked with the jerky visuals better than I could of hoped for.

I was happy with it, but there were many imperfections that bothered me. I should of directed my actors with a little more discipline I think. Obviously I was afraid of making them uncomfortable being that they were all friends volunteering. They would of been more effective if they all took a more neutral robotic stance though... In some parts at least. I think maybe I would of liked to have included some more complex sounds, some underscoring in parts as well, to give it some dynamics.

In Retrospect and Rationale

I ended up getting the editing done in the course of two days. On the Thursday and Friday before the film night. The stop motion shots worked out pretty well as I hoped. The idea of using short clips of moving film as opposed to still images had exactly the effect I was after, and one I wasn't expecting. With the plastic cups shot, being able to keep the audio in an essentially stop motion shot ended up being pretty neat.

Filming almost done

I finished most of my filming on the weekend. All but the last shot. I acquired the assistance of everyone. Well, 8 people. They were all lovely, although unorganised. I put pots on their heads instead of watermelons. A few things needed to be improvised. Mitchell broke my ironing board too. It's all good. I'm going to start capturing today hopefully, if I can get the last shot done. Then I'll start clipping together the "stop motion" frames. I'm excited. The end.

Beginning preparation for seminar.

I have to do my seminar in just over a week. What I've got at the moment is a little unorganised, but I kind of like that. I've been able to keep piling in new ideas as I go without too many restrictions. I've decided to stick with the idea of a party as the main story, but with other deviations to support my genre (which can be classified as absurdism). The themes I have picked out to cover and discuss in my seminar so far, to describe them generally, are social, existentialist, and expressionist.

During my seminar I intend to show people videos of some of the artists I have been gathering inspiration from, a thought I might back out as it might negatively effect the audience reaction to my finished piece (due to people disrespecting a lack of apparent originality). This is one of the videos I'm thinking at the moment, it is of a musician/sound artist I've recently taken a huge interest in, and stolen a number of techniques from.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2WSeZZV6iQ&feature=related

I couldn't find any decent videos of the performance artist Marina Abramovic I've been studying so here is a description of one of her performances, "Rhythm 0":

To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her.

Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were scissors, a knife, a whip, and, most notoriously, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.

Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) several people began to act quite aggressively. As Abramović described it later:

“The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.”

Inspiration

I've collected the two beats I want to use for my film, one is said to induce euphoria, the other creativity and inspiration. The inspiration beat is very aggressive, it has very defined pulses, so what I've decided to do is have the euphoria beat playing throughout the entire piece (save for one part of silence somewhere at the end). The inspiring will only come in at choice sections accompanied with a large number of shots a fraction of a second in length.

Recently I've been looking at this performance artist Marina Abramović and I've found a lot of her work very inspiring. It made me think that performance art is to drama, as sound art is to music. Maybe I could do a similar concept for my piece, do video art instead of a film.

The Plan Thus Far

My idea at the moment is essentially to create a "music" video to accompany a binaural beat. Most of my ideas for the actual film content arrived to me last night as I was falling asleep. I'm not sure why, but I've decided to make it centered around a party. A very absurdist, abstract take on one, slightly satirical, entirely happy/scary.

The shots I have in my head so far include party hat wearing, eye close ups, scooter long shots, pouring petrol and methylated spirits into party cups, falling watermelons, and extracting juice from fruit with a syringe. Obviously the structure will be a little strange, but it will by no means be non-linear. There is a definite story (but not a definite protagonist).

The story is simply preparation, journey and arrival at a party, as well as celebratory proceedings. I want to show it in a very robotic way, to remove the warmth of the idea and display it as a robotic scene. One of the techniques to help me with this is to use many people as the protagonist as once, without introducing or displaying any real character traits. I aim to film each actor for the protagonist doing every action and rapidly cut between them so as to connect them as the one character.

For now, my goal is to collect the raw sounds I will need followed by creating a script and storyboard.