For my graduation project, I intended to create something out of nothing.. Bricolage, Collage, Surreal.. It had to be quite a challenge of course, and since I have a huge passion for cinema, it was soon decided it had to be a movie..
But not, of course, a ‘real’ movie.. rather an artistic interpretation of a movie. Almost like a painting of a movie. A moving painting of a movie.
I had no money, no professional equipment, no experience in working with actors, no professional actors.
I did have however a brain full of ideas, equally creative friends to help me, and a small digital camera. This, i felt, should suffice!
First I started to work on the script. I wanted to write a simple universal story. I studied a lot of scripts, and I realised it should be a movie without words; I
wanted to make something that addressed the viewers in a non-verbal, intuitive way. I wanted to actively involve the audience, evoke their own interpretation, since every interpretation is unique, and it encourages us to feel rather than think. There can be no misunderstanding, because all interpretations are right. And the story one sees, becomes ones own story, ones reflection of the story, and the story reflected on oneself. The wonderful subjectiveness that reflects how nothing is absolute, and nothing absolutely is.
When the script and the storyboard were ready, I involved my creative collaborators, and we began to figure out how to transform them into moving images. It was as an exercise in [re]inventing the history of cinema. We began to apply old techniques to modern equipment, not only to create an eclectic, organic, yet contemporary atmosphere, but also to reflect the whole process as being an ‘artistic interpretation of a movie’. To understand the essence of something, I chose to start at the very beginning.
Limitations can provide an excellent exercise in creativity! And money can be easily replaced with creativity and time.
With the help of Kai Nobuko, who also plays the Fool, we used various techniques, such as stop-motion animation, frame-by-frame modification of digital footage and still image, as well as moving footage and phone videos, in order to create a consequently inconsequent dreamlike world, creating patterns and breaking them, exploring the possibilities of (modifying) aesthetic and cinematic rules. Bubu, who plays Palmiro, the Magician, then composed the music, expressing the emotions and story of the characters.
We tried to create magic and inspire the imagination of others. For imagination is such a powerful thing, and sets the path to true freedom of the mind!
