Thursday, June 11, 2009

Time to start again

This is a proposal for Howard, definitely subject to change depending on whether it is approved or not- stay tuned...


Inspiration
As far as the look and feel of this video, I still want to stick with that pop surrealism type of feel that you referenced for the last video when you referenced Mark Ryden and Scott Radke... but instead of the darker moodier colors of Radke, and the more macabre tone of a lot of Mark Ryden's work, I picked a bunch of my inspiration from Joe Sorren... still staying in the world of the surreal and whimsical, but definitely brighter in tone to fit this song. Color inspiration comes from here....

I love the golden feeling in this Sorren piece, the combination of reds, yellows and a pinch of teal is similar to what I was telling you before... bright without being tacky. I want it to be a little oddball, but still with a lot of heart.



What I imagine from the lyrics is that this is a song about a man, in this case "String man" from the Siberian video, who is really in love with a woman, but the woman seems to be distracted with her odd collection of things. A lot of the things she collects and keeps are silly, the tissue paper, the old underwear, but they have a lot of sentimental value to her that the male doesn't quite understand. She is a little bit eccentric, a bit with her head in the clouds, but she means well. Undoubtedly though, he would prefer she spend less time focusing on objects, and more time realizing that it's not about the objects.

The woman in the video looks a bit doll like, with porcelain skin, dots of rosey red on her cheeks, and pinched red lips... she looks like a mix of a china doll, a 20's era flapper, and a ballerina - like she came right out of a music box or a silent black and white film- but with a bit of a zany edge.... she wouldn't care about mixing stripes with polka dots, she loves color and unique things. Her apartment and herself are a bit like Amelie if you have ever seen that film. Some of the inspiration for her can be seen below...











This girl seems to have a bit of an obsessive collection problem herself...







See amelie's weird collection of photos? She would have something like that...


She would also have something like a honey yellow brocade wallpaper I would imagine.


Now as far as the man goes, we will be using String man from the last video, but he will get a new wardrobe... also Howard, since I am redoing his body, do you want him to still have 4 arms or should I cut it down to 2? It depends on how out there you wanna be with his character in this. Either would work since I imagine this is more of a prelude to Siberian farmland, and this is string man in his life before he ended up in that other world. Like in the other world, he is still in love with strings and music, but he plays a guitar type instrument.

Synopsis

The general setting of the video takes place in the woman's abode. She lives in this wonderfully cramped city apartment. When They enter her apartment string man is stunned by the sheer amount of stuff piled all over the place, her "collections": piles of papers and buttons and jars full of all sorts of things. It is full of stuff, but it has a bit of a magical quality. String man looks around the apartment, picking up weird objects he can't possibly imagine why she would have kept. She, noticing his concern, leads him over to a spot on the floor. she grabs a pile of stuff randomly from atop a heap of thing. Sitting cross legged on the floor, she splays it all in front of them in a mess on the ground. They sit and look at the pile like two audience members at a play.
Focusing on the objects in an aerial view, the objects begin to move independantly, swirling about in a dance of sorts. Scissors cut up pieces of paper and items come together(buttons paperclips, string, those guitar picks that are mentioned in the lyrics etc..) to create two flat "paper doll" characters that resemble string man and the woman. The other objects move to create a bricolage/collage scene of them sitting in a meadow full of flowers. The image morphs into a real image of them(a memory of their past), sitting in the meadow of flowers where string man is playing his guitar like instrument for her.

The video goes back and forth like this 2 or three times with different memories that are tied to these bizarre collections of junk she has, to the objects moving on the floor, and them sitting watching this "play" of sorts. Everything in the memories is a bit more saturated and colorful than in the real world. I'm not entirely sure how I want the ending to be... I want to get across some idea that the objects don't matter as much, but that he has an appreciation for the beauty in her memories... We have a couple weeks before I need to hammer that down while I start building the sets.

A good example of objects animating themselves to create pictures is in Svankmajer's DImensions of Dialogue Part 1-



and lastly, some of the other images I found as inspiration - Big Fish is definitely an inspiration as far as movies go with it's classic feel, mixed with the whimsy of memories... as well as it's mix of unique characters and bright colors.


There ya go, let me know what you think Howard!

2 comments:

  1. cool!

    I'd say dive right in!!

    jriggity

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  2. Hi Curious Spoon,

    I'm contacting Joe Sorren fans to let them know about a big print sale he's having on his site. Not sure if that's "blogworthy" but we thought we'd give it a try. He has put all of his prints at 30% off for the holidays. They can be purchased through his online store at www.joesorren.com.

    Thanks so much for your time and Happy Holidays!

    Enjoy,
    Kristi Frazier, Studio Manager
    Joe Sorren Studios

    ReplyDelete