User:Luther Blissett/Documentation of Process
Log from the beginning of the year:
The beginning of this year I started writing about an adolescent guy living on himself in Rotterdam, feeling isolated, alienated and not able to make contact with other citizens. He went for a night out drinking in a city he felt has a disharmonic character, which causes the indifference between citizens of Rotterdam and causes him to feel singled out from his environment.
There have been a lot of changes since then, first several changes in the screenplay. A girl was introduced, because I hoped meeting another adolescent who has less problems with the city, would shine a different light on his opinions about the disharmonic character of the city. Divorced parents were introduced, thus the guy has an argument with his mother and had no place to go besides his father in Rotterdam, which he hasn’t seen in years. This created a sense of essence for having no other place to go and for his miserable feelings. After struggling for a few months with screenplay writing I decided to move away from the written word and move back to the image again. During writing the screenplay I made a lot of photos. The photos shared a lot of similarities even though the subject changed. I went for a week to Schiermonnikoog, an island in the north coast of Holland, to take a step back from my work and to be able to analyse my own photography. In this week I made a thorough analysis of my own working methodology in my photography. Although the week was meant as a week of rest, I couldn’t help myself making a short film. Afterwards I realised that my working methodology in my photography is similar as my working methodology in filmmaking. Back at school I started editing and from the edit derived a ghost story of two lovers hunting each other. The guy was literally hunting the girl, with the camera in hand when he runs and the girl was hunting him in his mind. When I teacher pointed out the similarities it shared with Tarkovski’s Solaris, I watched the film as well as Sodenberghs remake. I enjoyed seeing both films and understood the similarities, except in my film someone would never commit suicide, because somebody else inflicted harm upon the character. Instead my character would commit suicide if she feels she inflicted harm on her loved ones, because she could not live up to the expectations of them and therefore lost her sense of rationale.
I want to re-shoot the basic narrative of this film in a city environment, with the same working methodology as used on the island, however now I would like to work with dancers as actors. Together with the dancers I hope to expand the narrative and I expect their input to help me on a more direct interaction between the main characters. The city of Rotterdam will play an active role in the story, because the two main characters will be alienated in a big city, the city décor thus emphasis the fact that they only have each other in an empty city. It also creates an atmosphere of questionable realities; it’s not clear if her presence he is confronted with is a reflection of his own imagination, or she is a new version of her, or if this is his new reality. I plan to work with a +-/++/-+/++ scheme. This means that first seeing her makes him strangely delighted. He wants to see her again, yet he is confronted with only her back. She will not give in, because she feels everybody is still mad at her and the reason why she committed suicide is because she can’t confront her beloved ones anymore because she is too ashamed, she can’t stand the by her mind invented ‘eyes’ of her beloved ones. Therefore she can only show him her back (+-). When she is ready to look him in the eyes, because he persuaded her by his dance, there is a moment of reconciliation (++). However this moment makes him aware how much pain she caused him by committing suicide, which causes him to move away from her, from this ghost figure and now it’s up to her to persuade him (-+). After her dance, persuades him, they are both ready to reconcile with each other (++).
My aim is to make a short film. After shooting a short several images on Schiermonnikoog with myself and my girlfriend as actors, the edit formed into a ghost story of two lovers hunting each other. I want to re-shoot the basic narrative of this film in a city environment, with the same working methodology as used on the island, however now I would like to work with dancers as actors. Together with the dancers I hope to expand the narrative and I expect their input to help me on a more direct interaction between the main characters. The city of Rotterdam will play an active roll in the story, because the two main characters will be alienated in a big city, the city décor thus emphasis the fact that they only have each other in a empty city.
Tsarkovsky’s Solaris is an important inspiration for this project. What I find intriguing about his Solaris is the calmness in the relationship between Kelvin and Hatin. There seems not to be any urgency in their acts. Kelvin hardly seems upset about seeing his wife again who killed herself because he left her. However deep down as a viewer you sense the awareness within Kevin that he has to make a decision if he is going to erase her for good or not? There is one conversation that stands out for me. Hatin asks Kelvin when they speak about her suicide: ‘Did you think about me?’ He replies: ‘Yeah, but not always.’ I find this intriguing because normally when people ask someone who mourns a loved one they want him to stop thinking about him/her all the time. But when you are directly confronted with the one you mourned for you would be eager to say that you thought about him/her all the time. Thus I find this nuance in Kelvin’ sentence interesting. I think the scenery in Tarkovsky’s Solaris for the effect of alienation works better than in Sodenberghs Solaris, because the from of the spaceship is round opposed to the stretched out one in Sodenberghs. This circle form creates a form of repetition and stagnation. It feels as if they don’t progress at all on this ship. This makes their feeling of being captivated in a repetitive relationship with no solution stronger. As I hope to do with the city décor of Rotterdam.