My plan is to explore dreams in some way. I want to capture the surrealism and absurdity of dreams, without forcing them to fit into or aid a greater plot. I think I might do this by taking some of my own dreams, and simply shooting them without making them ‘make sense’ or adding cause and effect. Here’s an example of a dream I had that I might like to shoot:
I’m with current day David Bowie(in a suit) and we are preparing for some kind of potentially dangerous mission. He tells me to make sure there’s no drugs in my car. I tell him that I’m pretty sure there isn’t any in there. He refuses to believe this, but I tell him I don’t really do drugs. He ignores this, and tells me one more time, ‘just get them out of your car’. As to not anger him, I go to my car and look for drugs to take out, but as I knew, there was none. What I could see was several sandwiches, some toasted, in the backseat, so I took these out, thinking that maybe my friend put weed in them. But really I was just trying to appease Bowie. As I was doing this clean out, though, I notice someone by the car next to me. It’s Johnny Depp’s character from the tourist(a film which I haven’t seen, which i acknowledged in my dream). I suddenly get very nervous and think he is a bad guy. I try to stay hidden from him. Next, some kind of scene change saw Bowie and I standing at my car. After some conversation(I think), another character(which i seem to remember was a friend of mine, or maybe just another version of me) notices some kind of pink makeup equipment in my car. I pick this utensil up, and suddenly a smoke/gas comes out of it. After some confusion, I put together that Johnny Depp has planted it so we would pass out and then he could come(for some reason). In a very cool scene for a dream, I struggle to stay awake, as Johnny Depp bursts through the door similarly to Norman Bates in the basement scene from Psycho. I pass out before I see what he does.
Hopefully that makes some sense to you, while also making zero. Anyway, with the material being taken from my own dreams, my task will be how to best capture this through a camera.
(these are some rough and confusing notes that I wrote down earlier)
dreams
– imagery
– surrealism/absurdism
– little logic
– nightmare imagery
– falling, dying, accepting death
– can be idealised
– anxiety based
– prophetic
– funny
– not acton movies – inception
– base on own dreams
– maybe keep writing down, adapting dreams – then eventually create one piece incorporating all of them
– music and other sounds(alarms) invading
study
– movie dream sequences
– trainspotting, scott pilgrim, rosemary’s baby, the master, brazil, blade runner, big lebowski, being john malk, beetlejuice, babadook, american psycho(cat atm, logic), six feet under, signs, martha marcy may marlene, always sunny, inception(anti), heathers, eternal sunshine, 8.5, rushmore, twin peaks, true det, take shelter, aliens, louie, inside out, vertigo, synecdoche
– the double
– david lynch
– spring breakers
– psych music vids
– music – dream pop
(updates)
– explore dreams
– attempt to capture them on film
– focus on surreal elements – strange locations, characters, lack of logic(but is accepted)
– want to explore both absurd/funny dreams as well as scary dreams/nightmares – while also questioning if they could coexist
– could potentially introduce ‘reality’, as in having someone wake up from the dream, allowing me to contrast between the dream world and the real world
– want to use my own personal dreams as inspiration for content – example being one including david bowie, johnny depp and myself
– plan to shoot several small videos experimenting with different ways filming dreams – potentially use the same content, and just capture it in different ways, i.e. scary, funny, both
– experimenting may lead to a more ‘final’ piece(but not a final piece) where I might attempt to pt all the different methods into a more definitive version
– or just keep experimenting
– very much want to look to examples of dream sequences within films
– often humour based
– often serve plot in some way – foreshadowing
– some often aren’t what i’d call dreamlike – inception – for a movie about dreams, the dreams never felt like dreams, but just action set pieces(could potentially recreate a scene from the film, and make it more true to what i feel dreams are like)
– not only actual dream sequences, but films that have a dreamlike feel – lynch, pt anderson
possible ideas: ask people about their own dreams, and proceed to take small details from each of them, collating them into one crazy sequence