Saturday, November 29, 2008
A Christmas Jeer
Granted we are going through tough economical times, and really that does sound like the prerequisite phrase of the year, but I certainly think now, more than any other time is prime territory to stress the humanist elements of this time of year. I've heard too many stories on the news this week, and especially will now that Black Friday is over about how this month long home stretch to the holiday season is a microcosm for the recession we have embarked upon. What a perfect time to teach children a bit of humility, and the true meaning of the holidays. Now it certainly might be easy for me to say, for I am in that strange period of my life where I am old enough not to be devastated by a thin Christmas Tree present pile but yet too young to have a family of my own. I am 22 and I can certainly say I've had my share of plunderous as well as slightly disappointing Christmases, such as the year my big ticket request was the Daytona 500 Speedway race set. The commercials ran on television constantly during my cartoons, it was one of those race sets that had the supercharger, and the cars would come tearing out onto the track, I asked for it and asked for it, and put it on my lists to santa and to mom. One day during the holidays my mom came home with a box from layaway somewhere, and brought the items into her room, and then put the empty box back onto the big freezer box we had. It was an unremarkable brown box but for the simple printed words "Daytona 500 Speedway". So of course there could be no other explanation, on Christmas morning I'd have supercharged race cars flying off the track, hitting me in the knuckles, making me cry and never once considering putting the toy away. Well December 25th rolled around and there would be no Daytona 500 Speedway, like I had said, it was just a box they put her items in. I cant remember whether I made a big deal out of it, and I can't imagine i really did, though I've never let her live it down. My mother raised me to be a very appreciative son, I suppose I had my moments but for the most part I understood what was within my mothers limits and not to make her feel bad if she couldn't afford something for me, because now I now know how much she stretches her money. I am glad I was able to stay humble, I lived in a very affluent community, and I suppose at times felt a little jealous that my schoolmates got so much during the holidays, but my mother made Christmas equally as much about love, as material, and I believe that it is that spirit that's been lost. Everyone is worried about what's going to happen with consumer spending this month, whether the retail stores will put up even close to the same sorts of numbers as they'd hope, or even put up last year, parents are worried they cant afford certain big ticket items on their families list, as if they have some sort of material obligation to uphold. Sure, commend the marketing departments of all these retail giants for years for the two pronged obligation and 'child's wildest dreams come true' norm for holiday shopping, and pitting neighbors and peers against one another to make higher profits, but it certainly takes away from children's socio-economic awareness and sense of obligation to community and love for family. It's a perfect opportunity to teach them a bit about family budgeting and humility. I think families around the country talk about how this is a time of giving, yet really only refer to the gifts they are purchasing for friends and family, the retail stores want to make them feel like real altruists for doing that, that the smiles of their children are the only ones that matter, where in reality there are a large number of people who cant even provide for themselves during the holidays. It's time for parents to stop getting teary eyed watching stories about philanthropist terminally ill children and start actually making a difference, and breeding a culture of multifaceted holiday spirit in their own households. I think one problem people have is that they see these vast examples of philanthropy and feel as if the small things that they could contribute aren't good enough, yet another example of 'how to be' keeping people from stepping up. Yet when in reality spending a Saturday with their kids wrapping presents for underprivileged children and making cards and crafts like my mother and I did every year is an example of something small that can be done. I think it's time for parents to teach their children that every gift, every comfort, every skill, every passion and opportunity comes with responsibilities to somehow share that with someone. I have always felt that if one has a wealth of knowledge and a passion for something, than its their responsibility to breed that in someone else, thats why I coach soccer; the sport did so much for me that I felt so compelled to be a positive influence in a child's life so they too could get a large amount out of it. The same is true for holiday spirit. Instead of raising children that feel the only holiday obligations are for their parents to spoil them, raise children gracious of their gifts, appreciative of their friends and family, who strive to make a positive impact on those who might not be so lucky. Maybe then the struggling economy might not be the big story, rather the booming economy of good deeds.
French Vogue Calendar 2009
I cant really say I'm a huge Terry Richardson fan, but I am most certainly a fan of most anything coming out of my homeland. There is certainly a distinct difference between fashion magazines in the US and in europe, especially in regard to the totally different Playboy France. These great images are very refreshing in that they are pinup work that doesn't look like the awful myspace celebrity pinup work you keep seeing in the states with overweight, decent looking girls with the same rockabilly haircut as all the other girls, who know they couldn't model in any other context, in totally mass produced bullshit a la Alvarado. These images are legitimately sexy, without at all containing that corny pinup/hot girl calendar thing. Id like to get my hands on these. Well... the calendar too!
Monday, November 24, 2008
Spill (working title)
[to be continuously updated, piece in working, to be filmed in 2009]
Meditations on Old hollywood theme, Modern style b&w silent film. starring Belinda Bryant, Cary James, and Ariana.
vision: a film noir modern obsessively details oriented silent film about old hollywood. film might be shot in colour and converted to B&W with very careful tuning in final cut and other video software but certainly not overdone. B&W will have really rich tones and a focus on negative space and baroque styling. as much as possble characters might be cast along almost indescernable dark background elements or 50mm f1.2 bokeh. lighting will be dramatic and sharp but not too harsh (a high contrast styling will be applied but not at the loss of any grade, the whites and blacks will stand out immensely but chiaroscuro is important). all dialogue and sounds will be cut out, and whatever speech is written into the script will actually be said on set, but will be expressed with black screens with words, such as in old black and white silent film. actors will not be doing the overly dramatic body language and puppetlike behaviour, rather very natural and realist. the whole film will likely take course over the course of a few days or a week. scenes will be very short, almost snippits, and after certain peices of dialogue, when the screen comes back from the black text screens the scene will change completely, maybe just in that it would go from a wide room shot to a close in details shot, or maybe to a completely different time of day in a different setting. black screens will also indicate days of the week. most likely the film will take place over the course of a week starting on a monday and ending on a sunday. depending on the goal for the length of the film, each day will last from a few seconds to a few minutes, even as much as ten. there will be at least one day that will be extremely short, possibly only 5-10 seconds with no dialogue and maybe even no action (ex. wednesday scene ends, thursday screen shows, scene shows details of an empty apartment, hangars missing from the closet, the bedclothes sloppily put together, the phone off the hook, a dripping faucet, certain uncomfortable elements that show evidence of abandonment of the space in a hurry, end scene, friday screen shows, giza and kayla on the road in a car.)
a possible theme for this film is the two women make acquaintence with a young man, he is invited to their place fo a night of conversation, drugs, drinking, smoking ciggarettes and implied sex with the more dominant girl. an accident happens and he dies possibly an overdose, which happens after the dominant girl has sex with him, she does and comes out to spend some time with her roommate while he sleeps, she goes back into bed wiht him and he is already dead. something like that, the next day they fight over what to do with him the submissive charcter wants to call the cops, the dominant character demands they bury him, they have to take him out to the country side somewhere and bury him, they return to their apartment, they anxiously wait, they recieve a suspicious phone call and when they answer it noone says a thing (screen would read some hints at certain points, and at this point youd see a non quoted text making mention of 'soft breathing on the line, no words') the girls get spooked, abandon the apartment that night, the next day is just showing the abandonment and th next day they are still on the road, indicative of them being more than a full day away from where they lived. one of the girls had been more dominant in the arguement and planning to take the man to the countryside and sees the other as a vulnerabiity to her safety, that its possible she may rat her out. a cleverly done subtle scene happens to indicate she kills the other girl. would have to think this one out but it could possibly start that second to last day with the two of them in their hiding place, likely a motel, having the two of them sitting, the weaker one obviously has been weeping, and says something to subtley indicate that she feels extreme guilt, the dominant girl says something to indicate her apathy towards the situation, towards his death and their fleeing, after a few of the dialogue screens cut to a shot much later of her sleeping really well and the other. more moral girl sitting up restlessly in bed watching some sort of television show, some details shots from around the motel happen for a while kind of showing some negative space, the shot comes back to the television on snow as the moral girl slips into sleep. sunday screen text, cut to a scene of the dominant girl driving the car by herself smoking a ciggarette, a quick shot of blood stained white gloves, a bit more negative space driving, possibly a dialogue scene of her singing something, then cut to her at the bar in a diner eating like nothing happened and saying something to the waitress. the waitress spills milk from a glass, and apologizes to the dominant girl. (not sure if this would drop on her or just near her, but enough to make a disturbance to her and warrant an apology), the dominant girl says something to the extent of "mistakes happen" which would ironically refer back to the original accident with the acquaintence. she would say this rather apathetically, she would almost not react to the spilled milk, as if it didnt affect her. the idea here is that she doesnt cry over spilled milk, or even spilled blood, even over her best friends'. she has essentially the same reaction when they find the boy dead, when they bury him, when her friend is overcome with guilt, when shes in the car after murdering her, and when the milk is spilled. the last image is of the milk slowly spilling out and crawling across the bar table.
stylistic note: in The General (1927) it seems as if none of the dialogue is subtitled, so it might be interesting to play around with some dialogue sections not being subtitled at all, some of the non vital portions, the viewer would be lef to wonder what was said, though the vital portions of conversations, especially the big arguement the two girls have about what to do with the body would be expressed.
MONDAY (introductory scene, details survey, obvious show of friendship)
TUESDAY (meeting acquaintence boy, fun night of boose, smokes and conversations)
starting with apartment scene: cary is somewhat lounging on the couch, there is a table, and another single seat, hes sitting, smoking (and logistic note here, if none of them actually smoke, look into figuring out how to fabricate it, or at least smart editing so that they never actually puff them, but that they are lit). the smoke will be a nice aesthetic device along with black backgrounds, watching the swirling and random usage, take a lot of material of the smoke, play with it being blown into, and use them well edited as detail shots and somewhat of filler. belinda and ariana come into the room with some bread, some wine and glasses, ariana sits in the single seat and belinda sits rather close to cary and pours him a glass of wine. belinda is generally going to be a very seductive, sexy character in general. not overly so, but to the point where shes certainly got sex appeal. for a minute of time in the film they are talking, drinking, smoking, enjoying themselves, as the scenes cut back and forth, belinda and cary get a bit more affectionate, until she starts playing with his hair, and kisses his cheek. she whispers something to him, and cary smirks a bit, she goes off into the bedroom and he says something to ariana, and heads in there to meet her. ariana lights up another cigarette and slouches a bit. the scene cuts into the bedroom, where belinda is leading him to the bed, holding his hand, turns around, kisses him, tugs at his belt, sits down on the bedside and starts kissing him. the scene goes back into the livingroom, highligting some of the things ariana is doing in sheer boredom. soon the scene goes back to the bedroom, (if possible) belinda is topless, and cary is under the sheets, he has a plate with some cocaine on it, he takes a line, hands it to belinda and she puts it down, kneels over to do some lines, giggles at him, and then puts a shirt or a bra on and leaves the room, telling him she will be back in a few minutes. cary does some more lines, belinda goes out to talk with ariana, they talk a bit, sitting on the couch wiht one another, some time passes, and they have fallen asleep. belinda wakes up, tries not to disturb ariana, and goes back into the room. end.
WEDNESDAY (accidental death overnight, body found, fight, improper burial)
the scene opens with very bright white styling, the sheets are all white, white curtains with a high amount of light coming into the room. the objects and the characters clothing from the night before and whatever might remain ontheir bodies is mostly white and gray (this is important so tuesdays styling needs to depict this for continuity) it is almost over exposed. this is a large contrast to the completely dark scene endign tuesday night. the dominant character wakes, only wearing bottoms and puts her shirt on, rolls over back into bed, this portion is shot from above the bed, hopefully directly above it, and the male character hasnt moved, and is somewhat obscured by something, he is hunched over to the side of the bed, somewhat propped up with a pillow. a makeup artist is going to powder him so he is ghostly white, like a dead person might look, hes going to be directed to be very stiff. the dominant girl leands in towards him, touching his shoulder, rubbing him, nuzzling in to kiss him and wraps her arm around him. a few detail shots happen, and from above the bed you see her lean back a bit, as he is not very receptive to her snuggle attempt, and the pillow is pulled out from under him and he rolls lifelessly into the bed on his back, she finds it slightly odd, props herself up to look at him and realizes somethings wrong, she touches his face, feels for his pulse and runs out of the room, she doesnt scream or anything, she kind of just gets up, takes a look back at him and somewaht hurriedly leaves the room. the camera starts to zoom into him a bit, the scene stays with the overhead view of the bed, cuts in one time to portrait his lifeless face, and highlight the colour of his face in comparison to thie white sheets, and pillow (its possible to edit this to be lower contrast and saturaion to match the colours up a bit), then back to the overhead view and from the bottom of the screen the two characters come into the room hurried, then a dialogue part takes up the screen and the viewpoint changes to a more natural third person view from one side.
the submissive character discovers a bit of foam down the edge of his cheek and onto the bed, its inferred the boy had a seisure, and if the viewers paying attention they will note that he had been alone for a while in the bed. it seems as if the dominant character went to bed with him and slept with him after he died all night long. the submissive girl begins to panic (the dominant girl only really elevates her mood when arguing with the girl, but never really shows any signs of remorse, fright, shock or compassion to any situation,). they begin to argue, and this is the second larger peice of dialogue in the peice. only the vital parts of the conversation are put on screen. the arguement is inferred to be about what to do with him. the submissive girl makes a case for callign the authorities, and the dominant girl insists they bury him, burn him, something. as stated before, very few dialogue screens appear. the submissive girl says "911?" the dominant girl yells at her a bit, the submissive girl says "but what if..." is cut off with more dominant speaking, and she says "earth or fire?" or "shovels or gasoline?" in refernce to whether they should bury or burn the body. some detail shots ensue and when the scene comes back to the room view the bed is stripped, down to the mattress. and in the very next visual, its sundown, they are in the car driving out to the countryside.
THURSDAY (tense day, phone call, flee)
FRIDAY (abandoned house short scene)
SATURDAY (two driving scene, guilt overcoming moral girl, negative space late night scene in hotel)
SUNDAY (driving away after muder, final diner scene)
Meditations on Old hollywood theme, Modern style b&w silent film. starring Belinda Bryant, Cary James, and Ariana.
vision: a film noir modern obsessively details oriented silent film about old hollywood. film might be shot in colour and converted to B&W with very careful tuning in final cut and other video software but certainly not overdone. B&W will have really rich tones and a focus on negative space and baroque styling. as much as possble characters might be cast along almost indescernable dark background elements or 50mm f1.2 bokeh. lighting will be dramatic and sharp but not too harsh (a high contrast styling will be applied but not at the loss of any grade, the whites and blacks will stand out immensely but chiaroscuro is important). all dialogue and sounds will be cut out, and whatever speech is written into the script will actually be said on set, but will be expressed with black screens with words, such as in old black and white silent film. actors will not be doing the overly dramatic body language and puppetlike behaviour, rather very natural and realist. the whole film will likely take course over the course of a few days or a week. scenes will be very short, almost snippits, and after certain peices of dialogue, when the screen comes back from the black text screens the scene will change completely, maybe just in that it would go from a wide room shot to a close in details shot, or maybe to a completely different time of day in a different setting. black screens will also indicate days of the week. most likely the film will take place over the course of a week starting on a monday and ending on a sunday. depending on the goal for the length of the film, each day will last from a few seconds to a few minutes, even as much as ten. there will be at least one day that will be extremely short, possibly only 5-10 seconds with no dialogue and maybe even no action (ex. wednesday scene ends, thursday screen shows, scene shows details of an empty apartment, hangars missing from the closet, the bedclothes sloppily put together, the phone off the hook, a dripping faucet, certain uncomfortable elements that show evidence of abandonment of the space in a hurry, end scene, friday screen shows, giza and kayla on the road in a car.)
a possible theme for this film is the two women make acquaintence with a young man, he is invited to their place fo a night of conversation, drugs, drinking, smoking ciggarettes and implied sex with the more dominant girl. an accident happens and he dies possibly an overdose, which happens after the dominant girl has sex with him, she does and comes out to spend some time with her roommate while he sleeps, she goes back into bed wiht him and he is already dead. something like that, the next day they fight over what to do with him the submissive charcter wants to call the cops, the dominant character demands they bury him, they have to take him out to the country side somewhere and bury him, they return to their apartment, they anxiously wait, they recieve a suspicious phone call and when they answer it noone says a thing (screen would read some hints at certain points, and at this point youd see a non quoted text making mention of 'soft breathing on the line, no words') the girls get spooked, abandon the apartment that night, the next day is just showing the abandonment and th next day they are still on the road, indicative of them being more than a full day away from where they lived. one of the girls had been more dominant in the arguement and planning to take the man to the countryside and sees the other as a vulnerabiity to her safety, that its possible she may rat her out. a cleverly done subtle scene happens to indicate she kills the other girl. would have to think this one out but it could possibly start that second to last day with the two of them in their hiding place, likely a motel, having the two of them sitting, the weaker one obviously has been weeping, and says something to subtley indicate that she feels extreme guilt, the dominant girl says something to indicate her apathy towards the situation, towards his death and their fleeing, after a few of the dialogue screens cut to a shot much later of her sleeping really well and the other. more moral girl sitting up restlessly in bed watching some sort of television show, some details shots from around the motel happen for a while kind of showing some negative space, the shot comes back to the television on snow as the moral girl slips into sleep. sunday screen text, cut to a scene of the dominant girl driving the car by herself smoking a ciggarette, a quick shot of blood stained white gloves, a bit more negative space driving, possibly a dialogue scene of her singing something, then cut to her at the bar in a diner eating like nothing happened and saying something to the waitress. the waitress spills milk from a glass, and apologizes to the dominant girl. (not sure if this would drop on her or just near her, but enough to make a disturbance to her and warrant an apology), the dominant girl says something to the extent of "mistakes happen" which would ironically refer back to the original accident with the acquaintence. she would say this rather apathetically, she would almost not react to the spilled milk, as if it didnt affect her. the idea here is that she doesnt cry over spilled milk, or even spilled blood, even over her best friends'. she has essentially the same reaction when they find the boy dead, when they bury him, when her friend is overcome with guilt, when shes in the car after murdering her, and when the milk is spilled. the last image is of the milk slowly spilling out and crawling across the bar table.
stylistic note: in The General (1927) it seems as if none of the dialogue is subtitled, so it might be interesting to play around with some dialogue sections not being subtitled at all, some of the non vital portions, the viewer would be lef to wonder what was said, though the vital portions of conversations, especially the big arguement the two girls have about what to do with the body would be expressed.
MONDAY (introductory scene, details survey, obvious show of friendship)
TUESDAY (meeting acquaintence boy, fun night of boose, smokes and conversations)
starting with apartment scene: cary is somewhat lounging on the couch, there is a table, and another single seat, hes sitting, smoking (and logistic note here, if none of them actually smoke, look into figuring out how to fabricate it, or at least smart editing so that they never actually puff them, but that they are lit). the smoke will be a nice aesthetic device along with black backgrounds, watching the swirling and random usage, take a lot of material of the smoke, play with it being blown into, and use them well edited as detail shots and somewhat of filler. belinda and ariana come into the room with some bread, some wine and glasses, ariana sits in the single seat and belinda sits rather close to cary and pours him a glass of wine. belinda is generally going to be a very seductive, sexy character in general. not overly so, but to the point where shes certainly got sex appeal. for a minute of time in the film they are talking, drinking, smoking, enjoying themselves, as the scenes cut back and forth, belinda and cary get a bit more affectionate, until she starts playing with his hair, and kisses his cheek. she whispers something to him, and cary smirks a bit, she goes off into the bedroom and he says something to ariana, and heads in there to meet her. ariana lights up another cigarette and slouches a bit. the scene cuts into the bedroom, where belinda is leading him to the bed, holding his hand, turns around, kisses him, tugs at his belt, sits down on the bedside and starts kissing him. the scene goes back into the livingroom, highligting some of the things ariana is doing in sheer boredom. soon the scene goes back to the bedroom, (if possible) belinda is topless, and cary is under the sheets, he has a plate with some cocaine on it, he takes a line, hands it to belinda and she puts it down, kneels over to do some lines, giggles at him, and then puts a shirt or a bra on and leaves the room, telling him she will be back in a few minutes. cary does some more lines, belinda goes out to talk with ariana, they talk a bit, sitting on the couch wiht one another, some time passes, and they have fallen asleep. belinda wakes up, tries not to disturb ariana, and goes back into the room. end.
WEDNESDAY (accidental death overnight, body found, fight, improper burial)
the scene opens with very bright white styling, the sheets are all white, white curtains with a high amount of light coming into the room. the objects and the characters clothing from the night before and whatever might remain ontheir bodies is mostly white and gray (this is important so tuesdays styling needs to depict this for continuity) it is almost over exposed. this is a large contrast to the completely dark scene endign tuesday night. the dominant character wakes, only wearing bottoms and puts her shirt on, rolls over back into bed, this portion is shot from above the bed, hopefully directly above it, and the male character hasnt moved, and is somewhat obscured by something, he is hunched over to the side of the bed, somewhat propped up with a pillow. a makeup artist is going to powder him so he is ghostly white, like a dead person might look, hes going to be directed to be very stiff. the dominant girl leands in towards him, touching his shoulder, rubbing him, nuzzling in to kiss him and wraps her arm around him. a few detail shots happen, and from above the bed you see her lean back a bit, as he is not very receptive to her snuggle attempt, and the pillow is pulled out from under him and he rolls lifelessly into the bed on his back, she finds it slightly odd, props herself up to look at him and realizes somethings wrong, she touches his face, feels for his pulse and runs out of the room, she doesnt scream or anything, she kind of just gets up, takes a look back at him and somewaht hurriedly leaves the room. the camera starts to zoom into him a bit, the scene stays with the overhead view of the bed, cuts in one time to portrait his lifeless face, and highlight the colour of his face in comparison to thie white sheets, and pillow (its possible to edit this to be lower contrast and saturaion to match the colours up a bit), then back to the overhead view and from the bottom of the screen the two characters come into the room hurried, then a dialogue part takes up the screen and the viewpoint changes to a more natural third person view from one side.
the submissive character discovers a bit of foam down the edge of his cheek and onto the bed, its inferred the boy had a seisure, and if the viewers paying attention they will note that he had been alone for a while in the bed. it seems as if the dominant character went to bed with him and slept with him after he died all night long. the submissive girl begins to panic (the dominant girl only really elevates her mood when arguing with the girl, but never really shows any signs of remorse, fright, shock or compassion to any situation,). they begin to argue, and this is the second larger peice of dialogue in the peice. only the vital parts of the conversation are put on screen. the arguement is inferred to be about what to do with him. the submissive girl makes a case for callign the authorities, and the dominant girl insists they bury him, burn him, something. as stated before, very few dialogue screens appear. the submissive girl says "911?" the dominant girl yells at her a bit, the submissive girl says "but what if..." is cut off with more dominant speaking, and she says "earth or fire?" or "shovels or gasoline?" in refernce to whether they should bury or burn the body. some detail shots ensue and when the scene comes back to the room view the bed is stripped, down to the mattress. and in the very next visual, its sundown, they are in the car driving out to the countryside.
THURSDAY (tense day, phone call, flee)
FRIDAY (abandoned house short scene)
SATURDAY (two driving scene, guilt overcoming moral girl, negative space late night scene in hotel)
SUNDAY (driving away after muder, final diner scene)
Reclusive
[to be continuously updated, piece in working, to be filmed in 2009]
speaking with Samantha Cinnes about a photograph that she took.
'a theme on reclusive behaviours.'
a quick stylistic note
since this is going to be a theme thats largely voyeuristic, the filmer is not a known entity, it in no way dictates her actions and she never makes eye contact, she never reacts to anything its doing and she never has somewhat of a reserved personality while in private around the filmer. the photography is a study of her space as much as it is of her personality, she is not always the focus of the photography, she is in an enviornment. there are many shots of objects, of light, in shadows, beams of light on walls, reflections off televisions and other surfaces, the way it graces her body, ect. of some interesting things,things relevant to her reclusive behaviour, of some really mundane things, offcolour tones on her walls, scratches and imperfections on surfaces, stains, things of that matter. but generally she is not the focus unless otherwise noted.
MORNING
"i think it would be fun to do some longer films with you, serious concept stuff with a lot of filming in old parts of montreal. the older more historical parts with cobblestones. theyd be sexy and intense and strange."
sexy in that they are somewhat erotic at some times but not explicit, innocent almost, very higly fashionable and mysterious, intense in that the lighting would always be peircing and the visuals would be carefully planned out and gorgeous, intense in that some of the motion would be erratic and some of the facial expression would be very strong. strange in that noone really knows what this girl is up to, or whether she has some sort of problem, whether shes on drugs, whether she is affected in some way, but really she is just a strange little recluse.
"i actually really like the picture of you on your bed moving in different positions id love to do a part like that with minimal lighting coming in."
with almost the same setup she has in the photo but more of a believable sleep situation, with a larger window with blackout shades somewhat off frame we could manipulate to let in whatever amount of light we wanted to, to somewhat fabricate some of the stages of the light coming in and then go back in editing and rate each section and place it where it needs to be. the light would be extremely carefully placed and shed be posed in the most appropriate ways to let the light fall on her just so.
"see when i see things like that i start thinking about the motion between those poses, the light and the rolling around. id want to do a scene very very early in the morning before the sun comes up, kind of like a fake time lapse,"
in that it would be very short snippits of motion between the time of the most dark and most light in a natural progression. a time lapse would be more fast foward whereas this sort of look would be realtime but sped up in that it would be missing sections. it would jump from position to position, from grade of light to grade of light until it was early morning.
"and you rolling around in bed, kicking your legs, having a hard time sleeping, waking and sitting up, laying back down, and the light increases and increases as the morning comes in and illuminates you very carefully by our design, and then off with your day."
the scene would start with the darkest light we could muster an image with, as high an ISO as we could, grainy and likely muddy, but almost as much like natural eye night vision when eyes adjust, even contemplate if possible the idea of making it completely black there for a few seconds and fading into the first images so eyes are adjusting to the scene, as the scene progresses more and more exposure is coming in, maybe upping the ISO would help, then starting to allow the very early prerise sun to come in, then carefully monitoring the morning light coming in through cracks in the shade, gracing her body just exactly how we want it to. taking advantage of the light rising until its fully light in the room and then working with various levels of blinds open and shut to fabricate more scenes of this situation and editing them in where they look best. the entire scene itself would be short short snippits of differing length, differing perspectives and angles. shots from: almost exactly the perspective of the pictures shown, from her chest up over her face, down looking just on her eyes and cheeks, down looking just on her legs, her feet, her hands on the mattress, differing focuses with sometimes the focus being on the wall with a very fast peice of glass, wth her body very blurred, just her hair sprawled out over the mattress. end.
PREAFTERNOON
right after the bed scene ends there would be somewhat of a survey in the morning light of some of the other areas of the house, these would be very quietly scored, with no motion at all as far as objects are concerned, you could somewhat hear her moving around in the next room or coming in towards that room but she would not be there yet. things would be very meticulously placed in the house in these rooms, very much posing questions of the viewer about this girls lifestyle. we know shes erratic and had a hard time keeping postions in bed, but she has clutter, notes erratically written on small peice of paper and napkins, books open, half eaten foods, fruits, magazines stacked up, but its somewhat apparent she didnt have company persay, she made all this mess that night staying up late doing all the things she was doing. from what you could gather the girl doesnt have that selfconscious element of mothers when company is frequently over, not that the place is a complete war-zone, or that there is any dangerous mold growing anywhere, she knows where everything is but its all strewn about as if shes got noone to impress. the shots would be isolated, not very quick, but several seconds of differing intervals of these 'still-lives' of the objects in the room.
this part is somewhart inspired by the scene in 'marie antoinette' on one of the last indulgent nights, when there are shots of cake, jewlery strewn about, clothing, things like that in a really quiet moment in the morning light.
some of the shots would be stationary and others would be a little more handheld and shaky, but this part of it would be rather breif. samantha would enter from directors behind, coming quickly and abruptly across the frame, she makes no recognition of the director whatsoever, she is alone and this is somewhat of a voyeuristic peice. goes about her morning routine with not a moments thought about her appearance. she has serious bedhead, but in a really endearing way, she is wearing the same basic outfit shes got on in the pictures though its probably more like a long teeshirt and panties with high socks, or some kind of nightgown, whichever works the best, her socks are not at all uniform, one is up properly and the other is rolled slightliy and loose at the calf, just barely covering the kneecap. one part of her top is off her shoulder and she has last nights makeup rubbed about on her face. she has a couple cuts, possibly a taped guaze on her leg, who knows where that came from.
the motion and switching between image and image slows down a bit here and she is having breakfast and the shots are mainyl wide angle, an she isnt the subject neccesarily. she might be well off to the side of the frame, as if only just an object in the frame. you see her somewhat off frame eating her breakfast, looking at the paper, looking like shes somewhat in a hurry though she doesnt exactly have anywhere to go. she continues to ruffle through the paper, shes one of these people that licks her fingers to turn the pages, flicks the paper with her hands to flatten it out, folds the paper when shes reading, she drinks coffee, eats fruit salads, the camera sneaks in from time to time for detail shots, really really shallow depths of feild across the news paper, across her lips as the fruits go in, then some more normally depth shots of her fingers manupulating the newspaper at each movement, in flipping the pages out, in licking the finger to turn, in folding it, in holding it, in tracing under words to read. those parts will be more segmented. she will be wearing a certain colour of nailpolish thats chipped a bit that coordinates well to pop off her fingers and the grays and blacks of the newspaper, and off the boring bokeh in the backgrounds.
she heads back to the bedroom to get dressed, and there are some miscellaneous shots of the materials she used to make her breakfast. canteloupe rinds, discared strawberry leafs, grape stem bunches with a few grapes left, coffee grounds in a filter spent and soaked, an open sugar bowl, traces of sugar on a non white counter, wet spoons, an open cabinet. and then up close on her hands again in her room as she finishes getting dressed. this would be a very carefully planned part isolating the hands as they move about, following them mostly back of the hand side as they grab a button up top, unfolding it, unbuttoning it, in whatever way they would be when putting it on and then buttoning it up and fixing it, then shuffling through her hair, all the while the polish would be a focal point. a big sidenote here is that the rest of the house would be very well lit and hopefully quite white in appearance, totally open and exposed windows and supplimentary light, whereas the bedroom was very dark, and only well used curtained window light and thin scrims from supplimentary light are used. the sequence continues but it somewhat choppy as not all angles and elements of the hand usage is possible. for instance when the hands are in the sleeves of the shirt the focus would be on the exposed hand and then jump to the cuff to see the other hand coming out. focus would always be on at least one hand until the sequence is complete.
she then finishes her getting ready in a less pretentious way, expidites it, the view here is more wideangle again and shes off to the edge of the frame pulling her pants on view from behind and her butt slides into the back of the pants, and she heads out of the room. the next part is filmed from the very other side of the well lit room with her coming out of her room towards the viewer, passing and then the door slams off frame. end.
AFTERNOON
the shots now start outdoors. hopefully a cobblestone roadway would be easily located and the filming would start in an open patch of it, heading off somewhere unknown. hopefully the cobblestone roadway would be multicoloured, beige, brown varying grays, sepia, copper, clay. the camera is not too far off the ground scanning the ground sections fluidly, moving forward, handheld but isolating and from the same angle the whole way. diagonally to the extent that the cobblestones are not moving in straight lines, it is panning maybe 15-20 degrees off center. her shoes enter the frame somewhat walking along with the cobbles, she seems hurried, the frame pans up a bit to include her legs, then her waist and eventually angling up to showing her back and her hair flowing, shes a bit offcenter and then the view comes back a bit slightly, she moves forward away from the camera and then it switches to her side. a few more of these hurried closeup shots across her face, then transitioning into actually showing the enviornment.
shes heading through a commercial kind of area, and the shots here are going to have to be very well planned out, it always seems that in these 'placing the subject' shots its all street signs, store signs, cars, conventional devices you seem to find in every film that requires this. these types of shots should be more unconventionall but would still place the subject. focus is on detail. as these parts come to an end she comes walking through the last placing shot and the camera starts to follow her. when she gets close to where shes going the frame abruptly goes off to her in some public building as secluded as she can get, very much avoiding people in her surroundings.
speaking with Samantha Cinnes about a photograph that she took.
'a theme on reclusive behaviours.'
a quick stylistic note
since this is going to be a theme thats largely voyeuristic, the filmer is not a known entity, it in no way dictates her actions and she never makes eye contact, she never reacts to anything its doing and she never has somewhat of a reserved personality while in private around the filmer. the photography is a study of her space as much as it is of her personality, she is not always the focus of the photography, she is in an enviornment. there are many shots of objects, of light, in shadows, beams of light on walls, reflections off televisions and other surfaces, the way it graces her body, ect. of some interesting things,things relevant to her reclusive behaviour, of some really mundane things, offcolour tones on her walls, scratches and imperfections on surfaces, stains, things of that matter. but generally she is not the focus unless otherwise noted.
MORNING
"i think it would be fun to do some longer films with you, serious concept stuff with a lot of filming in old parts of montreal. the older more historical parts with cobblestones. theyd be sexy and intense and strange."
sexy in that they are somewhat erotic at some times but not explicit, innocent almost, very higly fashionable and mysterious, intense in that the lighting would always be peircing and the visuals would be carefully planned out and gorgeous, intense in that some of the motion would be erratic and some of the facial expression would be very strong. strange in that noone really knows what this girl is up to, or whether she has some sort of problem, whether shes on drugs, whether she is affected in some way, but really she is just a strange little recluse.
"i actually really like the picture of you on your bed moving in different positions id love to do a part like that with minimal lighting coming in."
with almost the same setup she has in the photo but more of a believable sleep situation, with a larger window with blackout shades somewhat off frame we could manipulate to let in whatever amount of light we wanted to, to somewhat fabricate some of the stages of the light coming in and then go back in editing and rate each section and place it where it needs to be. the light would be extremely carefully placed and shed be posed in the most appropriate ways to let the light fall on her just so.
"see when i see things like that i start thinking about the motion between those poses, the light and the rolling around. id want to do a scene very very early in the morning before the sun comes up, kind of like a fake time lapse,"
in that it would be very short snippits of motion between the time of the most dark and most light in a natural progression. a time lapse would be more fast foward whereas this sort of look would be realtime but sped up in that it would be missing sections. it would jump from position to position, from grade of light to grade of light until it was early morning.
"and you rolling around in bed, kicking your legs, having a hard time sleeping, waking and sitting up, laying back down, and the light increases and increases as the morning comes in and illuminates you very carefully by our design, and then off with your day."
the scene would start with the darkest light we could muster an image with, as high an ISO as we could, grainy and likely muddy, but almost as much like natural eye night vision when eyes adjust, even contemplate if possible the idea of making it completely black there for a few seconds and fading into the first images so eyes are adjusting to the scene, as the scene progresses more and more exposure is coming in, maybe upping the ISO would help, then starting to allow the very early prerise sun to come in, then carefully monitoring the morning light coming in through cracks in the shade, gracing her body just exactly how we want it to. taking advantage of the light rising until its fully light in the room and then working with various levels of blinds open and shut to fabricate more scenes of this situation and editing them in where they look best. the entire scene itself would be short short snippits of differing length, differing perspectives and angles. shots from: almost exactly the perspective of the pictures shown, from her chest up over her face, down looking just on her eyes and cheeks, down looking just on her legs, her feet, her hands on the mattress, differing focuses with sometimes the focus being on the wall with a very fast peice of glass, wth her body very blurred, just her hair sprawled out over the mattress. end.
PREAFTERNOON
right after the bed scene ends there would be somewhat of a survey in the morning light of some of the other areas of the house, these would be very quietly scored, with no motion at all as far as objects are concerned, you could somewhat hear her moving around in the next room or coming in towards that room but she would not be there yet. things would be very meticulously placed in the house in these rooms, very much posing questions of the viewer about this girls lifestyle. we know shes erratic and had a hard time keeping postions in bed, but she has clutter, notes erratically written on small peice of paper and napkins, books open, half eaten foods, fruits, magazines stacked up, but its somewhat apparent she didnt have company persay, she made all this mess that night staying up late doing all the things she was doing. from what you could gather the girl doesnt have that selfconscious element of mothers when company is frequently over, not that the place is a complete war-zone, or that there is any dangerous mold growing anywhere, she knows where everything is but its all strewn about as if shes got noone to impress. the shots would be isolated, not very quick, but several seconds of differing intervals of these 'still-lives' of the objects in the room.
this part is somewhart inspired by the scene in 'marie antoinette' on one of the last indulgent nights, when there are shots of cake, jewlery strewn about, clothing, things like that in a really quiet moment in the morning light.
some of the shots would be stationary and others would be a little more handheld and shaky, but this part of it would be rather breif. samantha would enter from directors behind, coming quickly and abruptly across the frame, she makes no recognition of the director whatsoever, she is alone and this is somewhat of a voyeuristic peice. goes about her morning routine with not a moments thought about her appearance. she has serious bedhead, but in a really endearing way, she is wearing the same basic outfit shes got on in the pictures though its probably more like a long teeshirt and panties with high socks, or some kind of nightgown, whichever works the best, her socks are not at all uniform, one is up properly and the other is rolled slightliy and loose at the calf, just barely covering the kneecap. one part of her top is off her shoulder and she has last nights makeup rubbed about on her face. she has a couple cuts, possibly a taped guaze on her leg, who knows where that came from.
the motion and switching between image and image slows down a bit here and she is having breakfast and the shots are mainyl wide angle, an she isnt the subject neccesarily. she might be well off to the side of the frame, as if only just an object in the frame. you see her somewhat off frame eating her breakfast, looking at the paper, looking like shes somewhat in a hurry though she doesnt exactly have anywhere to go. she continues to ruffle through the paper, shes one of these people that licks her fingers to turn the pages, flicks the paper with her hands to flatten it out, folds the paper when shes reading, she drinks coffee, eats fruit salads, the camera sneaks in from time to time for detail shots, really really shallow depths of feild across the news paper, across her lips as the fruits go in, then some more normally depth shots of her fingers manupulating the newspaper at each movement, in flipping the pages out, in licking the finger to turn, in folding it, in holding it, in tracing under words to read. those parts will be more segmented. she will be wearing a certain colour of nailpolish thats chipped a bit that coordinates well to pop off her fingers and the grays and blacks of the newspaper, and off the boring bokeh in the backgrounds.
she heads back to the bedroom to get dressed, and there are some miscellaneous shots of the materials she used to make her breakfast. canteloupe rinds, discared strawberry leafs, grape stem bunches with a few grapes left, coffee grounds in a filter spent and soaked, an open sugar bowl, traces of sugar on a non white counter, wet spoons, an open cabinet. and then up close on her hands again in her room as she finishes getting dressed. this would be a very carefully planned part isolating the hands as they move about, following them mostly back of the hand side as they grab a button up top, unfolding it, unbuttoning it, in whatever way they would be when putting it on and then buttoning it up and fixing it, then shuffling through her hair, all the while the polish would be a focal point. a big sidenote here is that the rest of the house would be very well lit and hopefully quite white in appearance, totally open and exposed windows and supplimentary light, whereas the bedroom was very dark, and only well used curtained window light and thin scrims from supplimentary light are used. the sequence continues but it somewhat choppy as not all angles and elements of the hand usage is possible. for instance when the hands are in the sleeves of the shirt the focus would be on the exposed hand and then jump to the cuff to see the other hand coming out. focus would always be on at least one hand until the sequence is complete.
she then finishes her getting ready in a less pretentious way, expidites it, the view here is more wideangle again and shes off to the edge of the frame pulling her pants on view from behind and her butt slides into the back of the pants, and she heads out of the room. the next part is filmed from the very other side of the well lit room with her coming out of her room towards the viewer, passing and then the door slams off frame. end.
AFTERNOON
the shots now start outdoors. hopefully a cobblestone roadway would be easily located and the filming would start in an open patch of it, heading off somewhere unknown. hopefully the cobblestone roadway would be multicoloured, beige, brown varying grays, sepia, copper, clay. the camera is not too far off the ground scanning the ground sections fluidly, moving forward, handheld but isolating and from the same angle the whole way. diagonally to the extent that the cobblestones are not moving in straight lines, it is panning maybe 15-20 degrees off center. her shoes enter the frame somewhat walking along with the cobbles, she seems hurried, the frame pans up a bit to include her legs, then her waist and eventually angling up to showing her back and her hair flowing, shes a bit offcenter and then the view comes back a bit slightly, she moves forward away from the camera and then it switches to her side. a few more of these hurried closeup shots across her face, then transitioning into actually showing the enviornment.
shes heading through a commercial kind of area, and the shots here are going to have to be very well planned out, it always seems that in these 'placing the subject' shots its all street signs, store signs, cars, conventional devices you seem to find in every film that requires this. these types of shots should be more unconventionall but would still place the subject. focus is on detail. as these parts come to an end she comes walking through the last placing shot and the camera starts to follow her. when she gets close to where shes going the frame abruptly goes off to her in some public building as secluded as she can get, very much avoiding people in her surroundings.
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