Pre-Production for 08/03/24 studio shoot

My ideas for this shoot are coming together nicely. I have put together a small crew of myself and three others; Phemia and Sophie from the course, and Eliza, an old friend and creative I have worked with a lot who while be helping with on set styling.

I have also got roughly six performers who will be helping me bring this to life on the day. Was touch and go at some points with people dropping out and new people joining, but fingers crossed it all goes well on the day. I have the performance studio booked from 9-4 pm on the 8th. Hoping I won’t need the whole time but it’s good to have in case. I’m glad I completed a recce and tested out my lighting and camera set ups, this has made me feel a lot more prepared for it all.

Reflecting on what Kitty and I discussed, some developments have occurred in my planning stage. On her suggestion, I have gone and found large thin plastic dust sheets that painters use to create the membranes that I want my performers to be “birthed” from. Originally I was thinking bin bags, but Kitty made a good point that these are mundane and recognisable, so will break the illusion I am creating. She also said that I should avoid maki g pollution so overt with using literal trash in the costumes, so instead I am focusing on colour palette of black and white fabrics, to evoke these contrasts. I was also considering using something that looks like oil to come from my performers orifices, but Kitty again said that this was far too obvious. The implication of pollution to be more subtextual or at least less heavy handed, so I am going to rethink that element for another shoot.

As you can see in my mood board, I’m thinking more about the body and movement now for this shoot, and I intend to make the choreography feel animalistic, imperfect, angular and frantic, ignoring the graceful impulses that might first be associated with diaphanous fabrics and form. I think this might work really well as it’s an inversion of what is used to being seen, of graceful figures swathed in drapery that comes from the classical tradition in art.

These membranes I hope will be effective in showing contortions and jerky movements, creating this sense of Otherness and revulsion.

Kitty and I discussed this idea of the Other and whether or not I solely focus on the human form, or if I create this distance by removing the humanity from the body. This was a hard question to answer, because I want these things to coexist. I think walking the line between known and unknown will be really effective, as often the scariest things look human. I want to a play in this space, as a lot of folk horror, folk tales, mythologies focus on this idea about entities that look human but are not, and that they are scary and threatening. Not sure if this makes sense, honestly at this point this is just a ramble, but I am going to continue thinking about this, alongside the idea of The Body and hope that I can eventually articulate it. It’s very easy for me to visually express this, just not verbally.