SEARCH ME: A Final Reflection on EYES

"The you of today is a survivor, a very close survivor, of the you of yesterday. It is a survivor, though a slightly more distant survivor, of the you of last week, and a much more distant survivor of the you of last year. In a single body is not one person one self or person, but a succession of selves, a river of selves, each one a survivor of the one that went before. To the extent we can talk of the self, we are talking of something that has the character of a river, a process, not a thing."

- The River of Selves from The Philosopher at the End of the Universe.

"Memories - you're talking about memories."

- Rick Deckard, Blade Runner

Anxiety and Boredom: June 2012 – September 2012

This project started life in the spring of 2012 as a short film and was something that I did a great of deal of preparation for during my summer break. The short film idea that I toyed with throughout the summer was called A&B (which stands for ‘Anxiety and Boredom’) and it was hugely influenced by the experimental art house film Radio On. 

However, while A&B was a very strong visual idea that would have intensely explored the themes of anxiety and boredom, it lacked a clear narrative to express those themes. I certainly was all for creating a very strong visual presentation in acknowledgement of all the films that had nurtured me and which I had come to fully appreciate through my academic ventures in Film Studies, but as my degree was also concerned with creative writing, I felt that it was only fair that I honour both sides of my degree by delivering a final product that was visually very strong and complimented by an equally strong narrative. As such, I abandoned A&B and started again.

Look familiar?

Coinciding with the initiation of my final year in September 2012 I hit on a new idea – an idea that concerned itself with a character called Boris who liked to collect photographs of peoples’ eyes and this became the EYES short film idea. This Idea I certainly appreciated much more so than the A&B idea as it provided a better starting point from which to develop a narrative. I even toyed with the potential of doing it as a mockumentary! Very early on I could see that the basic premise of the idea was building on my Busybody script; a script that I had submitted for my short filmmaking module in the previous year and which also concerned itself with the process of looking as it had been a script about voyeurism. The starting idea for Busybody was of a landlord who installs hidden cameras into all of his properties; from that basic premise I was able to develop a narrative that dealt with two characters who liked to engage in voyeurism. Clearly I had a subconscious agenda to look at the gaze, as this same theme came up in my other two final year projects Ways of Being and Fencing. 

However, as I now had a clear starting idea that offered both visual and narrative potential, I was confident that I could produce a strong short film out of it – a calling card for myself.

And then I listened to my doubts.



Storytelling and Experimentation: October 2012 – November 2012

The redeeming feature of the Creative Enterprise Project module is that it provides each student with a blank canvass on which they can paint whatever project they like; it is also a module designed to get the students out into the industry they want to work in, so that when they graduate they can get employment in that industry. To this end, I wondered if there was something better I could do than a short film. The reason why I wanted to do a short film is because I felt that the short films I had helped produce in Planning and Making a Film, my filmmaking module from the previous year, were only marginally representative of my potential and, now that I had access to the necessary resources, I saw the Creative Enterprise Project module as a chance to rectify previous errors and produce a short film that absolutely expressed my potential, opposed to being a botch-up. However, at the end of it all, I was really just making a short film for myself, because it had always been something I had wanted to do to a high level. The industry initiative was secondary. Therefore, I felt that I owed it to myself to do something that would be highly beneficial to my career aspirations and would directly assist me in securing a job once I had graduated. 

It was always about looking for a new approach.

To this end, I sought advice from the person who had tutored me in Planning and Making a Film: Mike Johnston. Mike was the person who suggested that I could do a web series project that would entail the construction of a series bible document and a pilot episode. He suggested this as a better option because it would more fully exploited the full range of skills that I had nurtured over the course of my degree. Furthermore, the ability to tell an ongoing story, opposed to the self-contained narrative of a short film is much more appealing to the industry. Today in the industry, there is much more emphasis on television and movie franchises and stories that are told in multiple parts.

The marvel cinematic universe is a key example of this shift towards mulit-part stories.

Mike made a compelling case for undertaking a web series project and he even suggested that I take it down the transmedia route, but I was hesitant to do this as it would have created more work. However, I was pretty sold on the web series idea because it would still allow me to conduct filmmaking in the form of the Pilot; as well as allowing me to express my creative writing and contemporary industry awareness. It was also a challenge as I knew virtually nothing about the relatively new web series medium, but challenges generate a great deal of creativity. 

I seem to be obsessed with looking.

The next step was taking the story idea for the EYES short film and moulding it into something that could be an ongoing story. Fortunately, as the EYES short film idea had only recently been formed it was still a proto-idea and, therefore, was very ripe to be shaped into any form or medium. During the process of creating the web series story idea it became obvious that what I needed was an overarching concept that would carry the web series identity and allow each episode to develop its own stories based around that common concept. Another problem arose that I was running out of time and by this point I was already going into November and I knew that if I was going to pull this project off I would need to get the pre-production phase largely done before Christmas! Therefore, I took to recycling previous Ideas that I had used in past projects. P.S. was the first short film script that I had written for submission in the Planning and Making a Film module, but had decided against submitting it as it was very complicated – it was complicated because it dealt with telepathy.

Imagine a world where all human consciousness was connected together like wifi.

I had written P.S. about telepathy because telepathy is something that has always interested me and I have always wondered what the world would be like if it actually existed. Therefore, as it was an abandoned script I felt that it made sense to give that concept a second chance and I realised that the complicated nature of something like telepathy meant that there were innumerable stories that could be told about it – therefore, it would serve as an exceedingly good overarching concept for an ongoing story. Also, the idea of putting thinking and looking together immediately seemed like a very natural idea. Telepathy is also a very unconventional subject that does not get covered much and I saw it as offering the potential for experimentation in the way that a story could be told around it. I was sold.

EYES Vlog Update 25 - Retrospective

My POV: A Montage

A montage demonstrating my point of view. This was made for a final year documentary assignment. The mood and style of this is what I was going for in the A&B short film idea, it's funny how the brain recycles things. This is also relevant to the EYES idea because the montage is about looking/seeing/point of view and I was very consciously aware of the EYES idea while putting this together.

A&B - The First Short Film Idea

Here I discuss the first idea I had for my CE project.

During the Summer I was developing a short film script idea called A&B (Anxiety & Boredom). I like how boredom and anxiety are both negative forces but each contradicts each other. You have anxiety where your blood pressure is very high, you become over-sensitive and you’re jumping about all over the place trying to get things done but not really getting anything done. Then you have boredom which is just numbness, but is equally as counter-productive. As all drama is built on conflict, I figured anxiety and boredom could come together to create a very dramatic story. This said, the resulting ideas were all pretty terrible, cliché-ridden and flat. They didn't really solidify into any further on from the basic themes of anxiety and boredom, hence the title.

The first scene would have been someone answering their front door to be confronted by one of those really irritating, two-faced charity promoters. I tried to develop the script from this starting point with someone who was over-emphatically trying to sell their cause to someone who just didn’t care but doesn’t have the willpower to say no. On it’s own it would have made a nice scene but it just didn’t ignite a story I wanted to tell.

However, In terms of style and the feasibility of making another student short film, I invested much thought and consideration.

A&B I was very keen to be presented in black and white and that came from a film I had watched called Radio On, a British road move made in the 1970s. When talking about it, the director said the reason he shot it in black and white was not because he was trying to create a pretentiously artistic film but rather because he didn’t like the colour of Britain in the 1970s. By shooting the film in black and white he was able to avoid the brown blandness of the countries recession induced colour palette. 

Radio On Trailer

With A&B, as it most probably wouldn’t have been shot until after Christmas, my thinking was much the same. I wanted to avoid the very cold, lowlight look of winter. Also, using black and white allows much more freedom with the use of artificial lighting, because you don’t have to maintain the realistic integrity of the full colour spectrum (and I’ve always been a fan of film noir and German Expressionism). 

Film noir. Alan Ladd, This Gun For Hire (1942).

German Expressionism. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).

I was keen to use more outdoor locations! I don’t have access to many indoor ones and my thinking is it is easier to get your hands on outdoor ones (although, I’m sure the logic of that thinking would’ve been tested). Bath is full of varied of architectural designs and shapes and I was keen for the visuals of the film to convey the film’s mood and under lying themes as much as possible. Also, with Where will it all stop and One Door Opened the majority of filming had been done inside. I wanted to try something different this time. I wanted to let my film breath and give the visuals some depth of field!

I tried to keep the cast list to a minimum, at one point there were only three characters. I was keen to incorporate more improvisation into the performances to develop the story beyond the script. The smaller the cast list the better, because it would’ve given me more time with each actor.

I thought about how I could use the camera. At one point I considered setting a rule where I would only be allowed to use extreme close-ups and long shots to tell the story! I also wanted to use more movement with the camera. I was not keen on the very obviously handheld style (Paul Greengrass) but I still wanted to incorporate movement, while still trying to maintain the smoothness of a well-mounted static shot. Then I began to think about how I could use the camera to tell the story and be apart of the story more so than the main character, I liked the idea of a free roaming eye.

However, I’ve decided not to pursue A&B anything further as it wasn’t going anywhere and I’ve since come up with a better idea. But the technical and feasibility considerations done for A&B will most definitely filter through into the new idea.