i am interested in the way messages are directing his movements, thats a nice idea, but i think maybe actual physical messages like bits of paper feel a bit forced. the idea of the music directing his movements could work, like as the track moves or changes the character moves and changes.

i like the idea that before the track their is an intro of some kind and then a journey occurs when the track starts, and then theirs a break in the middle.

i think there could be an element like the character being linked to the band in some way, like he wears a mask and the band wear masks (but maybe masks is the wrong thing, something more subtle) and that is why he is going to search for them. Like he is an alien and he is trying to get home (E.T.?) in a very subtle non alien way.

i love the idea of symmetry, lots of shots could use this, and ideas of framing every single shot in a certain way, like kubrick.





love the idea of essex as the location(s)

my (short) post today is to suggest that when thinking about locations, we could do a lot worse than Essex, immediately to the east of London. There's a huge range of landscapes, including tons of coastline (with the sunrise over the sea on east facing beaches, good for the potential last shot? if we're still thinking of having the band appearing in it), strange looking marshland, places where industry encroaches on nature in quite unusual ways. Plus all this variety is easily accessible along and just of the A12. Here's a film by the writer/academic Robert Macfarlane which gives you an idea. It's a great film in its own right

White Ribbon

Burtynsky

- Gabriel has an idea for some scenes to involve a wide shot of a landscape with a figure moving through it. Why don't we take a field trip to industrial China?

Trying to quickly jot down an idea for how the video could open taking into account 1) it will have time before the music enters and 2) we were talking about Tarkovsky etc and having striking images that imply something further. On this subject, the idea of suspense being implied by what Gabriel came up with as a rough idea for the project would work along these lines, that is, a boy who appears to be being sent messages directing his movements. If we come up with ideas for single scenes or images then we can piece together a video from these. What me and G came up with a week ago was -

- My idea explained above

- Scene where he runs away from house and we see indistinct figures of his parents in the background as he leaves the front door.

- The idea that there are sinister Magritte-esque flourishes such as subtle hovering objects or a sense of 'weirdness', was explaining to G how in The White Ribbon the producers digitally removed all traces of modern life from the village featured in it, something one would not suspect it being a black and white film .. I was thinking it could be something like having everything symmetrical in a scene in a subtle way, so the viewer doesn't realise what is strange but senses it or sees it on a subconscious level.

- Stuff should be insinuated rather than shown.

- End scene is band on beach at sunrise/sunset with boy running to them but last shot is figures getting out of car on horizon and boy turning round.

- All obv needs to be done easy and cheap.

Guess that's probably how those directors (Wenders, Tarkovsky) work, thinking of images first and piecing them together. Obv these are very 'serious' people to be influenced by and I imagine this video would have considerably more humour in it than an AT flick.

Anyway i need to go to bed that's my attempt at starting off this blog. Post at your leisure.

Michael