My previous work could be defined as being very conventional
in narrative and direction, Ithink that
I demonstrate a certain directorial presence in my work, that is to say that I
think my films feel solid and coherent in terms of storyand I think you can see the level of control
that I exert over my projects.
Certainly as my confidence has grown, you can see my work becoming increasingly idiosyncratic.
For example my first project "Jeefs" was muchmore of a collaboration between myself and my
partner although I would say that I had less input onstory and construction than if did on
locations. whereas my last film " Capture the Rabbit " was very much
a product of my own design, whether or not this is a positive aspect remains to
be seen.
What I decided to take from my experiences of making "
Capture the Rabbit " wasmy
willingness to directand construct, I
looked another one of my films " The Walking Test"andI
knew that I could write something humorous and I could get performances from
relatively in-experienced actors especially as I had decided that I would play
one of the parts myself, this would give me the opportunity to help support the
other actor/actors. Myexperience in
writing scripts meant that I knew exactly howthe film to come acrossto an
audience, thus hopefully demonstrating my own practices and working methods.
MyR.E.D.
projectorResearch
and Developmentproject was to be split into two separate assignments.
The first, was a film that would demonstrate my current practices and my
working methods, the second assignment was designed to challenge these standards
by asking me to present work which would show that I had used unfamiliartools to create it and worked outside of my
own comfort zone.
Given the relatively short time that we had been given to
complete the first assignment, I set about writing a script and enlisting the
help of a smallfilm crew almost immediately,I decided to work with an Idea that I had earlier in the year, which was to film a
shortcomedy " sketch "involving a salesman and his protégé.
The reasons why I decided to work with this idea and not any
others were few, most obviously I need to be economic with time and resources
to allow for the best possible outcome, but I also knew that I could write a
script which kept the cast and crew to a bare minimum and utilised my own
address as an ideal location, which ultimately made for a more relaxed
environment on set and allowed me to focus on getting the performances I wanted
and allow time for any improvisations or changes to the material. Finally, I
will add that it being shot near my home minimised risk of harm to the
equipment as did the decision to shoot the piece in one day.
I knew that I would still have at least two full weeks to
edit the film and address any issues in post- production.
I used very basic equipment for the shoot:
# Canon 600D/ Fixed Lens
# Zoom Recorder
# Multi Directional "Boom" Mic/ Deadcat w.
headphones
William Friedkin's 1973 masterpiece " The Exorcist " is my all time favourite film. I have, in my posession, eight copies on varying format's and editions. It inspired me to investigate and research cinema and to create my own someday. I'm still captivated by the the technical innovations, the subject matter, the many levels of subtext within the narrative, the themes that are presented, the "no holds barred " visual style, the performances, the cinematography..it's endless. One thing I never saw it as was a simple " Horror" film, now don't get me wrong, there is no better example of a horror film and I doubt there ever will be, but this film is so much more than a scary film, it's not just a roller coaster ride or an endurance test, it's not a "body count" film and it's not "quiet,quiet quiet..bang!" film. It's an artitic, innovative film that discusses theology and it's place in the modern world, the meaning of human nature, the concept of good and evil, the guilt of single parenting, a comment on the perception and treatment of troubled children and the trials and tribulation of puberty seen from both the child and the parent's perspective. It's these things and more, that's what i see when I watch it and I could find nothing more disconcerting when having to sit through my first cinema screening of the film with people, sat behind me, who serve to do nothing but cheapen it by tittering and chuckling all the way through it!
I understand that not everyone shares the same love for this film that I do, but I think that it's a film that deserves respect for being as iconic and inspirational as it is. "The Exorcist" is a film which , these days seems to inspire laughter and mockery from younger, fresher audiences, I actually don't find this as much of a problem, in fact, it's these reactions which have informed my desire to use this film as the subject of my dissertation. But it's the "boyfriend" sat above me, who has obviously seen this film before and has brought along his girlfriend with the intention of showing her how tough he is for not getting effected by any of the more punishing scenes in the film, in fact every time one of these scenes would be close, I would here a kind of anticipation which could only be described as overly macho tittering, which whilst showing her that he knows what's coming, which also served to evoke some typical high pitching "mewing" from her, thus pushing the levels of peripheral obnoxiousness to an almost unbearable level.
Strangely though, I did find my own reactions interesting, It hasn't bothered me before when this has happened when watching other films. It really made me reflect on my own reactions towards the audience that night. Why should it matter to me, what they think of the film or how they treat it?. i suppose that maybe part of the reason is that i wanted this screening to be perfect , for me. I wanted the right seat, the right screen, the right accompanying beverage and i wanted this screening to be a life changing experience, an event that reassesses the film for me, after all, this should have been the perfect way to view this film and i have been waiting to see it this way all my life.
When i came out of the cinema, my first feeling was that i had ticked something off my list of " things to do before I die " rather than reflect on the film itself. What does this say about how my experience informs my reaction. for example I don't think anything will ever beat the first time i viewed it alone at fifteen years old on a beaten up bootlegged VHS tape. It was an occurrence which has influenced every viewing and every mention of that film. It's true that I did'nt really start to see all the aforementioned aspects until much later, my curiosity and my knowledge deepened with each and every viewing. In fact, my favourite memory is from the brilliant documentary "The fear of god" in which Mark Kermode describes his own initial experience with the trailer for the film, which by his admission scared the life out of him, yet all these years later it's his own personal favourite film leading him to not only put together a documentary buit wirte an accopanying book and campaign to get find the original cut of the somewhat maligned sequel " The Exorcist III ".
I had no idea that when I first saw this film that it would lead me to fall in love with it years later or that it would inspire me to really research and study cinema and film so seriously that I would end up studying a degree based on the subject. This film really made me look at all other films in a completely different way, I looked for things that I wouldn't have necessarily have seen or appreciated before, I began to really love films on a much deeper level. Maybe It's wrong of me to expect that others find that same sense of inspiration when seeing that film, maybe they've found there own touchstone which they can lavish with their love and adoration. Either way I think that this will be an interesting subject to tackle and I look forward to seeing where this takes me.
So here we are in the third year, more importantly my B.A. year. This is when I'm supposed to start demonstrating my technical ability, my knowledge of modern film-making practices, my willingness to create, direct and produce my own work. To be honest I'm still not sure whether or not I can do that with as much ease as I would have liked. I see how others around me have grown and I don't see the same progression in myself. I still annoy the crap out of Stu every time I don't know how to work "Final Cut" but then I shouldn't be using final cut anyway apparently!.
At the end of last year, I presented what would be my major piece for the year, entitled " Chasing a Rabbit " and while it was a moderately successful it was a far cry from what I had intended to make. I had failed to create the work which i had originally set out to make, which considering i had so many nights waiting in the cold to interview people outside the nightclub where the film was set. after that was a break of almost four months where I could do nothing but reflect upon what I got wrong in the last few years. In this time, i feel like I lost touch with what i had learned during the last two years, I spent much of my time dealing with the politics of a horrible part-time job, the financial strains of a mortgage and the temptation to let my degree fall into the bracket of " Just get it out of the way ".
I started this course because i wanted to be able to immerse myself in something that i feel passionate about, to create something, to discuss film with others around me and maybe achieve a qualification in a subject that I really love. the future prospects, the grades, the demonstration of technical knowledge was and still is an afterthought. I was so happy knowing that i would be able to get a break from my previous vocation which i had seriously, for many reasons, become disillusioned with. I never wanted this course to be all about me just meeting the learning outcomes and passing, I really want to have actually achieved something even if I just enjoyed my time taking part.
Which brings me to the creation of my R.E.D. 1 project which to most people will go by the name of " Door to Door ". This was a chance for me to re-evaluate my position and truly try and see what I have done in the first two years that has dictated my approach to this first project. what have I learned?. What are my habits, What would I consider to the characteristics that inform my current practice?. Where do I go from here?, how do I develop and How do I get to a place where I can create a final piece of work next year that I can present as I prepare to leave my education behind, safe in the knowledge that i am happy with what I made?.
Criminals, killers and psychopaths, all amoral characters which are responsible for many of our nightmares and have been the cause of social panic for decades. Many of these characters have also become the subject of many mainstream commercial films and have since become embedded in popular culture, more specifically postmodern media. These films tend to be generated from the “Horror” genre, or if a studio wishes to broaden their potential demographic a ‘Psychological thriller’. You can also find references in: comics, novels, merchandising, clothes, and even modern art.
Why in a post-modern culture, do filmmakers and artists manipulate these characters into their work? Why do we as consumers feel that it is appropriate? How long is it before we feel it is okay to present these horrific events in a medium like film? Many of these filmmakers could easily be blamed for exploiting these people and victims for profit and self justification.
(1)“It seems to be the tendency of much postmodernist media criticism to remove itself from the activity of society, the real world, to focus lived experience solely as text and discourse.
Such an approach is often considered as cynical, “academic” in the worst sense (irrelevant to public debate and public concern) and a particularly amoral stance when the subject becomes something as charged as the omnipresence of violence in American life” - Christopher Sharrett, Mythologies in post modern media. 1999.
Violence is something that has always been exploited as a means of entertainment. Ancient Romans are a perfect example, the games being held at the Coliseum(s) and other purpose built structures for the paying public (of many classes), where children were also allowed into, to watch the mutilation of human and beast. Each of these resulted in an actual death and dismemberment for most of the “entertainers” involved. It became more important that it didn’t finish without a death, attempting to brand this as a ‘sport’.
The Bible a basis for morality and decency, is itself an incredibly violent and dark work of fiction, although you could argue that many who live by its teachings would not perceive it as such. People do tend to forget how scary and horrific it actually is.
Ed Gein.
Arguably in the last century, there has been more attention being paid to violent crime through all media, most notably in cinematic work post 1950’s. In my opinion this was due to the much-publicized murders of Ed Gein. He may not be the most prolific or even the most famous but his crimes have been adapted and re-created many times, people now may not recognize the source material and from where it came.
Ed Gein was a simple ‘handy-man’ who lived on his family farm just outside Plainfield, Wisconsin. A small town, which at the time these crimes were committed, had an estimated population of 700 people. Gein was initially arrested in 1957 for the murder of Bernice Worden, a local hardware store worker; upon searching his property police discovered her corpse and remains of Mary Hogan, a bartender who had been reported missing. Remains of several other bodies were found, what was more shocking was what Gein had used them for.
Body found in Gein's home.
Human remains were used for upholstery for furniture, ornaments and masks, all made from the skin of bodies, which he had exhumed from neighboring cemeteries, these were just some of the macabre items that were found at Gein’s home.
He was arrested and confessed to both murders eventually being deemed “unfit for trial by reason of insanity” 1968, he was committed to a mental institute where he remained until he died in 1984.
Gein was arguably one of the first individuals to not only affect mainstream Hollywood cinema, but at this time McCarthyism was rife, to be an American was to be part of a wholesome family; moral, upstanding, contributing to the economy by consuming only the best, being religious attending church, anything that would convey the ideal of ‘perfection’.
This image had many an irony especially when it came to media and advertising. This advertisement shows George Reeves playing Clark Kent aka: - Superman with Jack Larson playing “Jimmy Olsen”. This commercial shows the two enjoying a bowl of cereal together at the breakfast table. Noel Neil who portrayed Lois lane at the time was kept out of the advert as producers reportedly had trouble with the idea of the audience seeing Lois and Clark eating breakfast together, which lead to them de-sexualising the on screen couple in fear of what that image would or could imply. Although at the time the irony of two grown men sat at a breakfast table together first thing in the morning may have been lost on some people.
Even more ironic was the reports of Gein’s murders were probably more circulated and widespread because more and more Americans had televisions in their homes as well as a high circulation of newspapers.
Many psychiatrists have theorized that Gein’s psychosis had stemmed from the apparent abuse of his mother she was intent on teaching Ed and his brother the sins of women the horrors of sex and consequences of not worshipping god.
She was reported to be a very religious and an overbearing character that had nothing but disdain for the world that she and her boys lived in. As a result Ed had very little contact with the outside world, it was only when his mother passed away that he ventured outside, Psychologist say that Gein could have been so consumed by loneliness and resentment coupled with an inability to socially interact with anyone that this truly allowed his psychosis to surface and take over completely.
Maybe you could say that this incident was itself indicative of the horrors of repression, the suffocation of our own instincts. I don’t think that it is sheer coincidence that after these events followed by the Vietnam war and Watergate Scandal, the notion of a “perfect” utopian America was crushed.
(2) “The Hyper violence of the post 1960’s cinema seems to have flowed logically from this attitude and from the barbarism of the Vietnam War the political assassination of the 1960’s, the scrapping of the social contract at Watergate.” - Christopher Sharrett, Mythologies in post modern media. 1999.
The first instance of Gein’s story being adapted was in “Psycho” (Dir. A. Hitchcock, 1960) adapted from the novel of the same name by Robert Bloch)).
This told the story of Marion Crane who makes a stop at a motel ran by Norman Bates. Unfortunately he turns out to be a violent killer, his mind twisted by the voice of his dead mother playing over in his head. The film certainly adapts element of Gein’s history although it certainly wasn’t as overtly gruesome as later films. Incidentally the main deviation from the book was the character of Norman himself, in the book he was an older unattractive man. What Hitchcock cleverly did was to present him to the viewer as an all American male. Tall, good looking, polite, a man who clearly loved his mother. This may be seen as an intentional act to communicate to the audience that Norman could be any one of us in society.
(3) “Psycho explores the varieties of middle class entrapment following their troubled protagonists as they negotiate a terrain configured by the interlinked authority structures: - psychic, familial, social, sexual that endanger pleasure and freedom” :- Richard H. Millington Hitchcock’s America 1999.
“Psycho” itself has become one of the most important films of all time and it was also the start of a revolution in “horror” filmmaking.
It has been parodied many times most notably in The Simpsons.
This it-self is interesting in the sense that children can watch The Simpsons and even watching those scenes they do not realise where the original source came from. To me this is a perfect example of post modernism, creating a parody resulting from appropriation.
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (Dir. T. Hooper. 1974) is notorious for its tagline
“What happened is true. Now the motion picture is just as real”.
Curiously enough it took the more visceral elements of the Ed Gein story (the upholstery, the skin wearing etc) and to place them into the story of a cannibalistic family living in the heart of Texas, torturing and slaying unlucky passers’ by. The most iconic character is of course, “Leatherface” a man who uses human remains to decorate himself and his house. His actions, although despicable, are the actions of a sociopath and a damaged mind not the actions of someone with any particular motivation. These traits were very much those of Gein, so it could be argued that “Leatherface” is the closest adaption of Gein.
It has not only become a much-loved film amongst independent filmmakers but also a horror masterpiece. It was at the time of its release, considered “immoral” and evil and was banned by the BBFC for over twenty years. You could argue that due to its exploitative nature it deserved its treatment.
It’s not just Film that deals with real life monsters. Art and music have also commented on the deeds of evil people. In fact, many facets of society appropriate images of evil and wear them, as a symbol The Pink Triangle is a great example. In world war two Homosexual males, when being led into concentration camps, were branded with a pink triangle next to their numbers to denote their sexuality. Along with women who were branded with the black triangle, die to them not conforming to the ideals of the Nazi regime. Nowadays the gay rights community uses them to symbolize their rights they have to fight for. Re-merchandising a weak symbol, this becomes a symbol of power and community.
Horror merchandise has become a subculture in its own right. You can buy mugs with the faces of serial killers emblazoned on them. In music, heavy metal bands have long used real life horror stories as the basis for their lyrics, sometimes purposefully presenting a tongue in cheek slant within their songs.
"Myra" by Marcus Harvey.
People may ask why artists choose to use these horrific events as the basis for their art, other than to shock and appall. I think to inject humor to retell these events and re-address these events and to push them into the public eye serves to both make people aware and to strip these horrors of their power to allow us to accept that they happen and as people we all have the ability to commit acts of evil, but in the end we all have the choice not to do so.
