Film Idea

The idea for my film came from looking through photography books. I saw some self-portraits (shown below) by Laurence Demaison in a book called Crazy Photography. I thought I'd like to do something like this, which I later decided to do for my fiction film production as part of a surrealist film.

The concept I came up with was to question how you see yourself and who you are. This would be done through various images of people with distorted faces caused by surfaces that have that effect and shadows. I do not want it to be obvious so I intend for it to be a silent film where the audience is allowed to come to their own conclusions and formulate questions regarding the plot and idea behind the film as well as about themselves if the film is successful in that area. I want music to accompany the images with whispers of words to guide the audience in the thoughts, sort of planting ideas in their heads but not telling them exactly what to think.

Themes and elements the film will have are water, darkness and distortion. Water can been seen as peaceful but also dangerous depending on your views of it and this I want to play with through the imagery. Darkness is considered a negative thing so this will set the mood/tone of the film by being in the opening shot. Distortion is more subjective, some people think it is abstract and interesting I think this element will be the one the audience engage with most.

I looked up Demaison later and discovered that she is a French photographer who specialises in distorting images, the book explains this is due to her disgust with her body. I found this interesting as I too was going with the idea of distorting the face and body but unlike Demaison it is not due to issues with my own body, merely a disbelief that you ever know who you are and how it cannot be defined by appearance or words.



Bibliography

Routex. D (2012) Crazy Photography. London: Vivays Publishing Ltd.