MEDA101
Cine’ Roman “VAPE”
This Cine’ Roman project was inspired by William Gibson’s tweet
This caught my attention as ‘vape’ was derivative of Vapour, which could encompass elements from all parts of my imagination. Vapour is known to disappear so I started to brainstorm a mind map all aligning physical elements of air including mist, smoke, steam and haze. Then I wrote down some connotations that came with them including themes of cold, mysterious, transience, illusion and fade that would ultimately set up the theme in my project.
Aspect to Aspect film techniques were used to convey the complexity of the vaporising narrative, which depicts a young girl arriving home in a dark and ambiguous location, only to encounter death in this horror subject. A focus on the subject initially using Hitchcock’s rule with the subject in majority of the scene, then later expanded to notions of Vape that eventually show to consume her. Things such as smoke from a lighted match, long exposure (showing illusion type shots) of a driving car, steam from hot water on cold surfaces and shower steam from both inside and exiting the windows were used as the setting for this work.
Upon using premier, I’ve tried to create tracking lines of pan and zoom along the smoke pathways to entice the audience eyes in a narrative way that opens the gap for interpretation. The accompanying sound adds to the suspense of the project, and a running commentary from me recites poetry about the transience of life as a metaphor for vapour’s swiftness to leave.
Still Image Project (Capture The Uncanny)
“Uncanny” work denotes a sense of fear or unsettled emotion, a strange feeling that something’s not quite right with the image, even though nothing in particular is necessarily wrong with the objects. For this particular work, I addressed the notion of uncanniness with inappropriate dress codes for certain situations and explored Freud’s explanation of the Uncanny with subtle reference to Death. I worked with strong symbolism of “red” to generate this state of panic, madness and death, in conjunction with small working spaces for a response of confinement and claustrophobia. I found by looking at artist’s work of uncanny, the objects and setting used made me feel greater discomfort, thus provoking levels of uncomfort towards everyday things such as a shower, lemonade and shoes with the materials and manipulation of setting. Lighting arrangement in the studio setting allowed for interesting exposure of uncanny value towards the red water’s reflection over a page. As well as this, small amounts of exposure time captured in detail the water dropping from the shower head, which I found to be quite aesthetic, in the midst of gruesome subjects. Interesting use of contrast and brightness picked up a strange uncanniness to the subjects, when given attention.
T H I N K Sam 