I met with another David on Friday. This is not David the photographer, but David the interaction designer and since I hadn't spoken to him for quite some time I needed to update on the progress of the film. He had an interesting way of putting my dilemna: I am by myself in a dark house at the top of the hill with nothing but a candle.
It helped me recognise the fact that I am still making a film. What I mean is that in an industrial situation once you are in post it is almost as if the process of creation had ended. For this project this is not the case. I
Recently I have been quite taken with the work of Philipe Grandrieux, such as Sombre or Un Lac. I am especially interested in the way that he creates an emotional texture with a series of near abstract shots. These shots might be soft-focus, they might be just slightly oblique to the previous shot, and they invariably involve a moving camera. In no way does he compromise by making a scene, with a number of shots of the action, a theatrical situation, and then cutaways and inserts. The layer of abstraction, is one and the same with what is happening to the characters we are following. His process is organic. Or better there is no form and content. They are one and the same.
I am missing an element, in that we are not able to see Claire as human, or human enough, so that she is difficult to follow. Do I need theatre? Scenes? Not at all. So what am I afraid of? In all of what I am trying to do I am not afraid of what the character feels emotionaly, rather I don't believe that we know that by means of theatrical techniques transposed onto film.
I need to find a way, with my own style, which could not be more different than the style in Sombre or La Vie Nouvelle or Un Lac, where I am able to work in this new layer.
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I am yet to see Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest film, Three Monkeys now playing at the BFI Southbank. If you have not seen any of his previous films, such as Climates or Uzak I would highly recommend them.
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