Mantra - Eye Project

Frame from 'Mantra

Edited

‘Mantra’ is a film which delves into the process of meditation and the different states that one travels throughout a meditation experience. It's a personal film which focuses on my individual experience through meditation, exploring the ways in which deep rest can elicit a multitude of emotions. Within the film, I use imagery that symbolises states of chaos with states of tranquilly using rhythmic editing techniques to marry these contrasting states together within a coherent screen experience.

Through making this film I aim to interpret my own meditation experience and investigate the ways in which contrasting emotional states can harmonise with each other. Meditation is typically thought to induce calming feelings, but it is not uncommon for stranger thoughts to emerge from the deep unconscious. In this sense, the meditation experience shares many characteristics with dreaming. Through this project I explore this dichotomy between the conscious and unconscious, myself and my shadow.

- Speech to text -

What are you making so for the pre-eye project?

it's a film which delves into the process of meditation and the different states that one travels through throughout a typical meditation experience but it's personal in that it focuses more on my individual experience through meditation and marrying contrasting emotional states. Within the film, I use imagery that symbolises states of chaos with states of tranquilly using rhythmic editing techniques to merge these contrasting states together in a coherent form and using visuals in ways to convey these different states that happen during the meditation process.

OK and why are you making this?

I'm making the film to explore the ways in which contrasting states can harmonise with each other but it's also a personal project as a way of me trying to interpret a meditation experience and the way that all these thoughts can pop into your mind. When most people think a typical experience is imagining a beach relaxing in the sun or something that there are all these strange thoughts that can come into a meditation and even though you always return to the mantra, it's also noticing when these things appear and trying to explore those things that do appear. I think it's also symbolic of dreaming in that your mind is sort of awake but asleep. It's the conscious mind and the unconscious mind both at play and so these little things that pop up are sort of moments from the unconscious coming from beneath and rising to the surface so I really wanted to explore how this state of meditation is like a state of dreaming and almost a bit easier to explore or interpret because it's more conscious in a way but these unconscious things come up in similar symbolic ways and so in this sense the contrasting states are the conscious and the unconscious or light and dark. A fascination of mine is investigating these feelings which seem to be such opposites but putting them side by side or flashing from one to the next so you can see the relation.

OK and how does it link to other things that you have done?

Well it was interesting because when we had our feedback session people said it reminded them of a music video and that's because I did use a sound track to edit to because I find that very helpful for my editing process to have markers and music to guide my decisions that I make. I chose a song for this project that seemed to match the typical meditation experience in that it used a mantra and in this case the song had a synth that sort of waves in and out in a similar way that a mantra does and then it also had a rhythmic beat similar to a heartbeat so I thought that was a good choice to use for the song but some people did say that it did remind them of a music video and so I guess in this sense a lot of my work is guided through music or sounds or drums or beats and rhythmic editing. I think looking back at previous projects or things that I've done this is always a common theme so I guess that’s a relation to prior work and also me working in music videos. So I think it naturally bleeds into more conceptual work as well and then also the commercial stuff too like working as a videographer and editing I think these I don't consciously try to bring commercial ideas into my work but I can't help it sometimes

How is it different to other things you have done?

I think especially for this project what sort of scares me the most is that it's quite personal because I'm the main character of it. It's me, it's my meditation, it's my thoughts. I'm actually pointing the camera at me for the first time when usually I'm behind the camera filming others or using actors and other characters to convey the story this time the camera is pointed at my face. I think it's the first time where I've really done that because when I went out to film this it was just me by myself, I didn't have a crew or anything like that where I usually that would be my workflow this time it felt quite personal and intimate with myself.

So, it feels more personal and more about the self than say when compared to commercial or commissioned projects?

Yes, exactly, where it's about a lot of the time trying to serve other people’s visions trying to make these visions happen and this time, I'm delving into what I want to do, I'm going in deep.

what are the most significant choices that you've made recently?

For this work I think by making it quite stylised going for that hard black and white effect as a way to merge different types of footage together because I initially started with what I filmed a few days ago but then I wanted to add in archival footage of things that I shot in the past of myself to showcase the different states noticed within the meditation experience so it became an easier way to blend this footage together by treating it with this black and white process and then using alpha channel compositing to blend the footage together which I hadn't done before. Definitely by pointing the camera at myself and making myself the focus meant a lot of new ways of filming and editing and new techniques and then also by pulling the archival footage in there as well and editing in this more abstracted manner or like however I felt I feel in that moment and sort of using intuition is a different process for me but it's exciting and I'm keen to keep following that direction.