Not last saturday the Saturday before I filmed all the footage for my film. Before the night itself I did a lot of planning. I had to arrange my dad to collect 'The Box' from my isolation project from college and move it to my house. This involved cutting down the metal bars so they were smaller. I order to move the box it had to be taken to pieces then reassembled at the garage, this took a good 3 hours in total. I wanted the garage to be like some kind of dungeon representing isolation. I took the mattress from 'Undoing The fairy Lights' and placed it in a diagonal angle to the box. I also placed some fairy lights around one corner of the box. I decided I wanted the mattress to have a tied up gimp on it - from my isolation project. This would be to represent the feeling of being constrained in ones own consciousness. In the box I wanted to use a figure again to represent the feeling of isolation we get being stuck in our own consciousness. Next on the agenda was lighting, I borrowed a very powerful halogen light to use in the film. I tried using it in various positions and doing some test films. After trying several different places I decided with a little help from my friends that it looked best behind the box which enhanced the outline of the figure. So now did the garage look like a dungeon....well...i think it looked more like a scene from Pulp Fiction but I liked it! I needed to find 2 willing volunteers to be my gimp and isolated man haha my good friends....Tom and Jez...my plan was not 2 tell them their part in the film until the got here on the night....it worked :p
Next I had to set up the lounge. I wanted a circus/acid trip feel about it so I wanted the characters to be surreal and bizarre...a bit like in Matthew Barneys The Cremaster Cycle. I am lucky enough in my lounge to have a huge projector which I could use to set the atmosphere. I considered using silhouettes on the projector- I thought they would be a good way of representing how although we can see peoples behaviour we can never know whats actually going on inside. The outline of a shadow is a bit like behaviour and the darkness inside the shadow is a bit like whats inside another persons consciousness. I practiced using some footage I had taken at a rave which involved silhouettes of people dancing. Although I liked this effect i thought it may take away from the performance which was going to be taking place in the lounge. I tried some other experiments using the projector and videos from www.youtube.com - Which are in my sketchbook.
The lounge itself is quite a long narrow room. I decided to place a mattress in the corner of the lounge...a similar mattress to the one being used in the garage, however, this mattress was to represent interaction rather than isolation. On this mattress would be two girls touching and kissing each other, in contrast I did earlier in this project.
I wanted to use the sofa in the lounge to do my scene with masked men explained in earlier posts. The concept behind these masked men is that there is always a barrier between the physical and the mental properties of a persons consciousness. The masks represent perceived behaviour....when the masks are taken off the man will be wearing face paint...this is to enhance the idea that everybody is somewhat of a mystery and there is no direct way of knowing how they feel...in a sense isolation is unavoidable.
In the middle of the lounge I set up a chess board on a small table, diagonal, in front of the projector. I set up two cushions on each side of the board for my characters to be sitting on. The whole concept of a chess board is supposed to represent the games people play through behaviour...a lot of our behaviour is a choice...(I can choose to steal sweets or choose not to). The whole of life is made up of these choices and this determines what we achieve or do not achieve. The chess board is supposed to represent these constant choices. I asked my two characters playing chess to dress in a circus themed way.
The other two characters are not in fixed places in the film...There is a pink bunny rabbit who will be playfully running around...this is supposed to represent the fun I associate with being around others rather than being on my own. There will also be a lady wrapped in tape and covered in balloons...during the film the rabbit will pop these balloons, to reveal the tape underneath. Again these balloons revealing a restrained form are supposed to show the mystery of other people....perhaps how we are restrained by our own body to connect with others.
