THE LAST POST

 

 

Colour was a very important aspect of this work.

Colour and repetition.

I decided I didn't want the DVD to loop , for although it followed no linear structure or real narrative, the sequence of vignettes did have a beginning and end. however, I don't feel like picking to pieces  why I chose to incorporate each scene .  It would become an over rehearsed dinner party. Seats with name tags. exhausted .

ALMOST THE END

After many many 'FIANL EXPORTS' and 'THIS IS DEFIANTLY THE ONE'
I finally exported my final film for hand in for the following day and was looking through it a last time and something about the log sequence wasn't right....I wanted it to have the feeling of someone being watched or preyed upon,
but not in a ' woman's body found dead on the beach' type of way.
I didn't want the opening shots to the feel like I was establishing a crime scene.
I wanted it to feel somewhat unsettling and ominous, voyeuristic and  hypnotic the longer it was watched for.

Although some of my favourite footage was with my body in the shots, obscured by branches and only hints of my home spun jersey showing though, I decided to delete all parts of me in it .
Except my hair.
The hair was vital for the unsettling, uncanny quality of the log scene.

KITTENS

This scene of the kittens is my favourite sequence of the film. When I edited it in , it gave me a strange feeling .
I had to leave for a while and go out side.
Eat something .
Smell some air.
For some reason I had disturbed myself.
I had become the voyeur .
The tables had turned.
The legs with the bulge in his y-front crept me
The slow moving tail or the hungry cats
Moved the same way as the trapped otters in the bath tub
There was such a feeling of cloister-phobia
A maddening air in concentration
The same sickly yellow as my table


                                           please watch video below

I decided the fennox fox dogs had to go in place of the kittens. I loved the fennox foxes , but couldn't have three different animals in risk of it becoming

Animals vs the wild.

Animals vs mankind

We are all animals


The aesthetics of the fennox fox defiantly fitted , but the indiscernible  mood the kittens evoked was better

Sound track inspiration

After talking to bryce I decided the hallways ( which I had initially thought more of a homage to Lynch than a Shihad video clip!....) defiantly had to go. They played an integral role in change of direction for the rest of my film however. I played around with the sound and speed. The air con from the jazz school hallways and like the shift of pitch when I slowed it all down. I especially liked the moment of change between the correct speed - sound pitch- to the slowed down speed where it drops down a tone.

After experimenting with this , I decided I liked the ambient noise far more than the more musical soundtrack I had made for the log video. I trailed different speeds and decided on the one that bought the pedals and synths out to a drone.

below is a short clip from one of the pitch changing videos of the hall

Also , the video I had thought was almost finished ( which I am having a lot of difficulty locating and think I recorded over so cannot show the process...) changed dramatically after talking to bryce. The empty table I had thought fitted in some eerie way without sound and its abrupt arrival was too abrupt....so without the table and corridors bridging each clip I had to rethink how I wanted my video to feel.
As I was talking to bryce about this TIlly was laughing on the other side of the  computer room at a bunch of crazed kittens on a kitten floor

The scene was so maddening and disturbing without meaning to be. watch video below

WILLIAM EGGLESTON

I don't know how I haven't stumbled across him before now.
William Eggleston
The more I stumble and link the more a realise this project has only just started.
Barely skimming the surface of what I want to create.
I will have to continue on with it next year.
I see this short film as part three of many parts to come.

It comes as no surprise to me that I am drawn to Eggleston’s work. 

His rich, seductive prints – which are the result of a colour dye transfer. 

 His work of dark undercurrents and mundane scenes of suburbia . 

“friends, family, barbecues, back yards, a tricycle and the clutter of the mundane. The normality of these subjects is deceptive, for behind the images there is a sense of lurking danger."

"Preoccupation with private experience is a hallmark of the romantic artist, whose view is characteristically self-centered, asocial, and, at least in posture, antitraditional.

 If Eggleston's perspective is essentially romantic, however, the romanticism is different in spirit and aspect from that with which we are familiar in the photography of the past generation. 

In that more familiar mode, photographic romanticism has tended to mean the adoption and adaptation of large public issues, social or philosophical, for private artistic ends (an activity that might be termed applied romanticism, as distinct from pure Wordsworthian independence), and it has generally been expressed in a style heavy with special effects: glints and shadows, dramatic simplicities, familiar symbols, and idiosyncratic technique. "

- John Szarkowski

Philip Gefter form Art and Auction noted he Eggleston was a pioneer of colour photography in the early 1070’s.

 He “borrowed consciously or not, from the photorealists. Their photographic interpretation of the American vernacular—gas stations, diners, parking lots—is foretold in photorealist paintings that preceded their pictures.”

P H O T O R E A L I S M

Photorealism is something that always used to repeal me. 

 Something about its purposefully garish colour palette .

The hyper real. 

everything about it actually

Then something happened

I visited a gallery in New York I can't even remember the name of

It was  raining

The current exhibition wasn't so interesting

But I came across a stand of post cards from a previous exhibition

They were all on photorealism

This indescribable reaction happened in my stomach

 I got nervous adrenaline butterflies

which I get when something deeply inspired me

But I cannot explain why

I bought ever post card off the shelve

the man behind the counter looked at my funny

I bought 50

compare II

JAZZ SCHOOL

CHANGING RED

I filmed this hallway upstairs for ten minutes, Linh opening and shutting the door at intervals to create shadow. I wanted the glossy red palette for the rest of my films. but even after enhancing the colour, it couldn't well be removed from being inside the school interior, which I didn't want. especially also in light of Deanna's work  being her red polished floor.

   

   

Filmed slowly going around the corner of the concrete wall, but far too cheesy and practicable of a lone photocopier and flickering lights.

 

I filmed this humming light for 4 minutes while the air con in the background was slowed down and altered in pitch

compared frames

  

comparing screen shots to see how they look edited with each other

the wild of the log and hair vs the wild animal held captive in a bath

the natural vs the unnatural.

Examining the line between nature and the man made.

questioning what is natural?

                 The high polished floors and piped up fox vs the high polished table and sexualized licking

                               both natural in origin but habituating unnatural environments

  The contained vs the free, unconfined . the bizaar

                                  

                 

pinky fennec

                        I like the over produced look of these two screen shots.

Screen shots with fennec and delay experiment ( look to DVD attached for film test )

I love these fennec fox dogs I stumbled across on you tube. Something about them reminds me of a  Matthew Barney creature in the Cremester series. or a scene from  David Lynch.

I have played around with the colour and gammer levels to get as much of the gloss as possible.

I want  to accentuate  their playboy bunny pink inner ears and highlight fur. 

I think the foxes go very well with the high polished table scene. 

In the above screen shots I played around with delays to create a more dreamlike effect. too much....

What captivated me most about these fox dogs and the otters,  are that they are both animals in unnatural environments. 

A complete contrast to the beach and log film. And somewhere in between of the table licking scene.

somehow they fit well in between the two.

My only concern is that it may become too animalistic. 

or animal vs human

That is always the danger of using two different subject matters, the unavoidable comparison between the two.

COLOUR PALETTE