Ewan's Draft Proposal

Separate States

Introduction

In the past six years acid related violence has increased in the London six-fold. This violence, usually between men, is designed by perpetrators to destroy victims identity. I want to make a short film, called Separate States, that uses this subject to explore the relationship between reality, simulation, identity and society

Separate State is a piece of absurdist speculative fiction that takes place in a world trapped in a loop, like a mythical Ouroboros, forever eating it’s own tail. The story follows an incident of acid based violence between two doppelgangers, each representing different people in society, although biologically identical.

How do you want to make it

I intend to shoot a digital black and white short film, with a small crew. The film will be 3 scenes working, as miniature 3-act structure, with the run time at around 10 to 12 minutes long.

The film features sound that is entirely detached from the images of the film. By this I mean it will feature voice over, which are the characters thoughts and a composed soundtrack over the action, obscuring what the characters say on screen. I am trying to create a work that is becomes a “non verbal experience” as described by Stanley Kubrick about his film 2001 a space odyssey. I want to make an image based film, rather than verbal, as I think that is a purer kind of cinema. I consider what I am going to make like a contemporary silent film.

I intend to collaborate with a musician, who could compose a soundtrack especially for the film, responding to the images and editing to create something uniquely tailored to the project. I want something akin to the contemporary soundtrack Nicholas Jaar did for The Colour of Pomegranates.

I want the film to convey that the characters are trapped within a hyper-real cinematic reality, that they are actors, forced to play their part. I consider all cinema a form of simulation and realism a false ideal, cinema is closer to dreams that real life. Through sound design, editing and production design I intend to convey a dream like narrative.

What is your timetable? I have already written the script, prepared storyboards and made a look book for images that influence the film. I am currently looking at funding options, failing that I will see what I can do without funding. I would like to shoot the film in December and have it edited and finished by February.

Why do you want to make it? I want to create a work that subverts how we consume media stories that exist within the collective conscious. The epidemic of Acid attacks in the UK has become such a big topic over the last year, with a lot of these incidents happening in similar ways, and thus the events often blurring into a shared perception as one.

I also want to continue my exploration of the relationship between reality and simulation. In this film the fictional and the real blend together to the point where they are indistinguishable. By the fictional I mean the setting and actual content of the film, by the real I mean the actual current events which provide inspiration for the plot. I want to create a work that is a ‘authentic fake’, a contradiction, the film will be both that- authentic and fake in equal measure.

I consider this body of work as existing in the realm of other European art house political science fiction films, such as those made by Kubrick, Fassbinder and Godard, amongst others.

Who can help you and how? -- Lotte De Jong??? Relation to previous practice? My practice is currently focuses on exploring the relationship between reality vs simulation and propaganda vs. empire. This work will also be set in the same cinematic world that I first built with my short film Divided Together last year, a film that exists within an alternate reality, without fixed conditions of time.

Relation to a larger context References https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/26/europe/london-acid-attacks-2017-intl/index.html The face of another. – Hiroshi Teshigara World on a wire - Rainer Werner Fassbinder Code Unknown – Michael Haneke Werckmeister Harmonies. – Bela Taar Alphaville – Jean Luc Godard. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations Byung-chul Han, Psycho-politics