It's been a while

Long time no blog....I have been busy with the old film production in preparation for next Monday's crit and it's now time for an update. So since the last post a few weeks ago the structure of the project has changed somewhat however, the overall concept has remained stable.

Tutorials and discussions have been leading me down a path that was to focus more on how the concepts of ideal living and modernity were practiced, most specifically in post war america and the case study houses. As the CSH scheme was an effort to deliver the ideal and homogenised living conditions strived for by the modern population it seem fitting that it should in some ways drive the development of my film. My character 'the man' lives in a highly synthesized and virtual environment which is produced through his desire to create ideal living conditions for himself. It occurs under synthetic parameters which simulate spatial arrangements to replicate the images that The Man holds in his head of how the ideal life should look like, based on his digestion of architectural representation seen and witnessed in various formats through out his life. This draws upon the representation of architecture as a means through which it can be designed and visualised. The CSHs were very much procured in this way and therefore made the viewing population understand the spaces as portrayed through the 2D images of magazine spreads and publications. This method of presenting architecture obviously leads to a framing of space as seen through the lens of a camera and in some ways the designer begins to only focus only on those components that lie infront of the camera.

The film itself now begins to pick up on the point of only designing what lies infront of the camera. This has been practiced in film making since the first matte paintings were produced by art directors in early film making. Such convincing 3D spatial representation tricks the eye of the viewer into believing that what they seen is actual real space in front of the camera, and they will never know otherwise as what the camera documents is permanently flattened into a 2D representational format.

I see the case study houses as a good platform to base this way of thinking upon as it seems that those houses were very much presented as a stage within which we could potentially act out our modern lives. Each graphic and representation of this modern life was carefully crafted and composed in the same way framing a shot in film making is.

The synthetic environment that I have crafted for The Man is one which aslo follows this kind of rigor as it maximises visual effect whilst also reducing what lies outside of the camera frame. It is almost as if the house he lives in is a complete set and the difference with this set is that it is more of a interactive set through which primitive and traditional film making techniques are employed to deliver a simulated environment which combines modern technology and mechanisation with the most simple and effective methods of representing space through film.