Craig y Nos

This is second choice for location, but would obviously be great for pond bits.  It’s very far away, and it’s a little too compact for me.  I think we decided on Merthyr Mawr for its rougher, surreal look as well as big skies and little horizons over which characters could appear and disappear.

Nevertheless, it would be good to use some elements of the shady bits and landscaping for creating the pond.

the trick with mirrors

Having chosen to film at Merthyr Mawr (at least in principle, it’s not confirmed from production pov), I would like to consider what we do for Narcissus’s pool.

a) Use an existing pool.  It’s been raining now for quite a long time, perhaps the temporary ponds will be back in Merthyr Mawr – a bit risky though.

b) build a pool in Merthyr Mawr.  My favourite option, but fraught with production difficulties.  The sand dunes are quite a trek from the car park, and getting water/pond liner etc. there poses a few logistical difficulties.  Hopefully not insurmountable.

c) Use a mirror.  Could work, the screen test with Luke (hopefully I’ll try to upload it next week) looked really nice, especially for installation bit, but is inconsistant if we’re using water with Gods, and also with Tiresias beside seaside. 

Note 1:  Pool needs to be quite small, so that we can shoot upside down POV of Narcissus’s reflection, or at least cheat this somewhere else. 

Question 1:  What do we do to get good reflections:  Do we get oil, or film with water and live with imperfections?

through a pool of water, or a veil of tears

There’s a couple of moments when Zeus and Hera turn the TV’s off.  What can they do if they are looking in a pool?  Look away and the pool goes dark?  Or use their hands to muss up the pool? or put a lid on it?

I’ll keep thinking.

At moment I think they should keep their peacock feather and lightning bolt and point it at the water/screens and turn the screens off that way.

through a pool of water, or a veil of tears

Jack

 I think this is an excellent idea.  I think the TV remotes are a bit clunky and probably the spectator will get the references to media images anyway from the blue screen stuff (although anyone please comment).

One issue arising is the mixture of metaphors in the God’s world.  They are still lazing around, mostly playing, as if they were watching TV.  What does having a pool do to the idea of sofas, mountain tops etc.?  I also liked the idea that Don had of statues in the God’s world, so perhaps we should make their little world a bit more like that section from Jason and the Argonauts and have a bit of history from everywhere.

 Also, this means an extra bit of scripting and scheduling in order to obtain stills of Echo and Narcissus, and even more alternative endings – another of Jack’s excellent suggestions.   A short photo shoot with Echo clipping Narcissus around the face, and vice versa, a kiss, a hand wiping away a tear, all would be great images for the Gods to toy with.   Would these also appear then in the “blue montage” down in screens 2 and 4?

 Cheers

Coral

through a pool of water, or a veil of tears

been thinking about a different form of “interaction” between the gods and the world of humans – let me run it past you… Zeus and Hera are seen on the top screen as before, but they are shot from below as if they are gazing into a pool of water, the lighting here would need to be in tune with this approach – dappled light etc., however, this is where it diverges from the original – we remove the TV zappers and instead the gods dip their hands into the pool and pluck images of the human world (blue screens) from the screen to examine (dally with???) and when bored the images are crumpled up and disgarded. how the connection between both worlds would work would be through the use of ripples added in past production to simulate the distruption of the surface of the water (and the world of humans) by the gods as well as maintaining the connection between the two aspects of the installation.

comments please???

Minutes of first meeting last week -16th May

Dear All,  Thought I’d put record of meeting last week on blog.  Don’t die of boredom! Had the first production meeting yesterday with all members of the team so far:  Humphry, Jack, Leonie, Don (and Assistant) Luke, Lucy, Ed and Louise.  Went really well.   Diarised and got date for final storyboard.  Next week discussions with design team separately. Jack showed his montage, which was very well received.  There was some discussion about the “Cartoon style” with the slow dissolves, which Leonie liked because it showed transitions, and also the Blue style.  I thought it was all good, but the issue of how the Gods control it was important, and this affects whether to use the slow dissolves or not. Also thought about music and interactivity.   Don’s assistant Franscisco? was very enthusiastic about the interactivity and wants to get involved in that aspect, especially with the soundtrack. Showed: Orphee, Clash of the Titans, Le Mepris, Beau Travail but not the pictures of Merthyr Mawr and Craig y nos, which could have been a mistake.  Also the minidv that Luke Lucy and I shot and that Luke and Lucy did post-production on. Really good feedback.  What emerged was what was unconscious in my mind.  Don noted that I liked a lot of statues, and non moving things, which I had not noticed.  Also that I had a spare sense of design – esp. in Beau Travail.  Leonie noticed that our previous discussions had all been about pre-raphaelite references and was surprised, and understood why I had liked Merthyr Mawr.  Humphry also liked Merthyr Mawr for the sense of sky and of different horizons, and I like it because it seems to show a whole fictional world.  However, he also wanted the best of both worlds – so do I – with some sense of lushness within the sparse landscape of the desert and some pre-raphaelite feeling.  Emerging from Leonie, Don and Ed was a feeling that I had to “make up my mind” about the visual style.  However, Humphry intimated that this is perhaps a modernist tendency to unify everything and I also felt it was a bit of a bi-product of showing clips (a kind of mood board) where some connotations were those I intended and some were not, but the team did not have enough knowledge of the script to judge.  It is also that we have very different designers, and different screens showing different things, so we do need me to have an overall sense of how everything will fit together. Don wanted us to make everything modern day, including costumes, to give a timeless feel. Having slept on it, today I realised that this is really a bit of a scripting problem.  I am now sure that all the characters should be in a kind of ancient greek costume, albeit an abstracted and timeless one.  This will unify all the screens and all the worlds.  The Gods live outside time and this should be reflected in their living space.  They need to operate the TV’s/computers, so perhaps their space should have a bit of everything in order to show them outside time. This is also where the Kitsch goes on and where the reference to Clash of the Titans happens.  In Clash of the Titans, they have dolls/midgets which they operate as puppets – is this any use? It is a different world to that of the nymphs.   I also wonder whether we need something in the script a little like the opening sequence of Casablanca with the map.  A map of Merthyr Mawr with where everyone lives, which turns into a panoramic shot looking down on Merthyr Mawr.  This might unify the style a bit. How are the nymphs going to unify with the warfare stuff?.  Is this why Don is so keen on modern dress? This is perhaps the hysteria which needs solving at the moment.  It is a fault of the script, it has no absolute solution, and therefore the playing out of variations will determine the way the film is going to be read. Which way will it go: allegory with Greek elements, or modern drama.  The hysteria says that the allegory will risk losing coherence and people won’t understand the modern references next to the old, and the modern drama misses the flavour and extra interest of the ancient greek.  Need the discourse of the master here. Sorry for the waffle, but I’m just starting it off. CheersCoral

Testing, testing…

Thanks, Jack, mightyefficient of you!! this is Leonie after my third all-nighter in a week… not good!! See you all tomorrow, Wed 30th, at (?) 5p.m., somewhere in the Rathmell…. pob hwyl i bawb.

Inception

This is the first post for Echo and Narcissus – at this stage the research project is at the development stage- the team will be posting work in progress at the project develops

Coral Houtman © 2012-2024