Scene 5: Main character looking at his reflection in mirror. The reflection keeps flickering from a true image to one of a creep girl with wide eyes.
Scene 6: Creepy girl from reflection sat on the ground, encased in darkness. Small light source creates a glow around her. She's looking down into a notebook. She looks up and her mouth starts moving in a distorted manner. Gentle but confusing sounds of an animal screeching comes out of her mouth.
Started off by making the creepy girl puppet. She represents the shadow self of the main character. It's key that she's the opposite sex as this highlights how the consciousness refuses to accept the shadow self as its self; it disguises it. She's also creepy and scary to amplify that she's the part of him self that he's afraid of acknowledging.
Final puppet:
Started by making a wire armature with felted wool ball joints. Felted wool around the limbs to create a rough body shape, used clay for the feet so they would stick to the base:
Then made a head out of polymer clay, purposely left out the bottom half of the face so I could harden the model and then add moveable clay over the top for the mouth movements:
Then added some doll eyes and painted around them; I chose the ones with the widest pupils to create the wide eyed effect:
Bought some doll hair and made a wig with a full fringe, used a bandana to hide the seems. The bandana is made from the same material as the main characters shirt which again is supposed to amplify the idea that she is his shadow self:
Then added clay to the bottom half of the face and wrapped the armature in fabric from a spare pillow case:
Thought she was looking too pretty so i decided to change the hair to straight with no fringe, also added some eyelids:
bought some lace to make a dress out off, but while experimenting I figured it looked interesting as some sort of shawl over the pillow case wrap:
Decided to tie the bandana on the top of her head:
Once I was happy with the aesthetic off the shadow self I started shooting for scene 5, first had a look at what she looked like with the mirror:
Started some rough experimenting with the changing reflection in the mirror:
wondering if it would be better to just have one flash of the shadow self:
Decided her eyes should try to line up with his:
Once I was happy with the reflections I started thinking about scene 6, which is the shadow self sat on the ground calling out in animal screeches.
First I put her into a seated position and folded her arms. I first did this without the lace shawl and it looks like she's wearing a straight jacket, which I really like, its promotes this idea that she's restrained from consciousness, that he's not letting his shadow self be free:
Then added the shawl, i like the idea that the shawl represents consciousness, its so intricately wrapped around the shadow self, which is restrained from touching it by the straight jacket:
experimented with mouth movements:
While doing this I thought filming my own mouth and editing it over the puppet might work well:
First smoothed over the mouth:
then filmed myself talking and edited it in:
Doing this sparked an idea: instead of having animal screeches coming from her mouth I could film myself talking, reverse it and then edit it in so her mouth matches the sounds. David Lynch reverses speech a lot and it has a great surreal effect and it's understood in certain circles that reversed speech is the voice of the unconscious.
The idea of her calling out in confusing animal screeches came directly from the dreamer I interviewed, it was how it happened in their dream so I really wanted to stick to it. But i'm now thinking this could work a lot better.
Both ideas suit the notion that the shadow self is calling out to be heard but the callings are hidden from consciousness and therefore come out confusing and can not be understood, but if i use the reversed speech I can put a real message in there that when reversed can be understood.
When interviewing the dreamer we came to the conclusion that this girl he saw out of the window could be his shadow self and that she was calling out to be heard. He felt some sort of anxiety towards her and felt that she was trying to get him to look at her through out the dream, but when he did he felt instant fear.
So I'm thinking she could say something along the lines of : find me , find me, find me .... come to the window but do not look...
Heres how that sounds and looks:
Mock scene 4-6 so far:
Think I prefer the deeper voice:
new audio: find me fid me find me, come to the window but do not look, i am a part of you, you can not ignore me, you are me, i am you, you are me:
Final scene 5-6, I think the addition of the heartbeat audio helps build intensity well. The heartbeat was made by my boyfriends throat and the loud crashes are me blowing into the mic of my iphone, edited and distorted:
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