Notes and Ideas from February

Inspiration from Jonathan Glazer First Light:

• I like the water sounds in the sound scape. Very alien and also sounds cushioned, like it’s detached from the material plane.

• Figures walking sinuously through water

• Woman with mud soaked dress, mud pouring off her shoulders, ideas about filth.

• Ned to do filth readings

• Flows fabric, emphasising movements

Inspiration from Matthew Barney’s Redoubt:

Rugged environment, humans existing in nature, moving through the landscape, mirroring it.

Movement inspired by the environment

Bodies are the focus, not the person or individual. The body moving through space.

How important is it to me that it’s a feminised body? I can relate to this type of body more I think, and I wish to see myself mirrored in my work. I also feel that the feminised body is rarely allowed to just be, it is always viewed in some way that’s intrusive, so I want to see if I can challenge that.

Movement replaces verbal language, body language is the main source of communication in this film.

Movement carries the narrative forward. The narrative is not clear but it is present. Need to properly study how this is done and apply this to my work. This is what I have been struggling to articulate since September.

Diana the Hunter as custodian of the forest, tied in to real world concerns about forest management and animal management.

Mycelium by Sophie Muller:

Lots of footage layering, really effective. She uses black and white trees and I think both projects the image and also layers it in the edit to create this fantastic mise en scene.

She also uses this graininess in the footage which creates a really interesting texture. Potentially shot on film or done in post.

The way that the edit is timed with the music is really clever.

This is a fashion film but it has a lot of interesting techniques and a string visual style that I would be tempted to experiment with.

She projects trees into an industrial car park as well, very interesting combination of natural and manmade. The structure we echo each other but are very different.

Storm Chasing by Sophie Muller:

Again there is this image layering happening in the edit which is really effective. She uses wind and body movement to accentuate the body and the fabrics of the clothing. From my point of view, this aspect is noteworthy as I want fabrics to help exaggerate body movements.

Again, a fashion film so the focus is the clothes, I will take what I want from the film and leave behind what I don’t need.

Diaphanous fabrics, relating interesting movements and shapes.

Wind sculpting the body.

Matthew Barney - from an interview I watched, he’s interested in documenting performance and storytelling. There seems to be a lot of similarities between our core ideas.

Idea for by shoots:

I can maybe incorporate veiled imagery, transforming the self into an entity. The body becomes the focus.

Perhaps could something with a skull like face behind a shroud, the body veiled in fabrics. Movement etc. moving through the landscape.

Need to research Sarah Ahmed, Helene Cixous ‘Stigmata, Unmahsed’, and also Rachel McLean.