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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