The studio is now finished! For the time being anyway, it’s now definitely a work space as opposed to a space to work in. It’s quite bizarre how it changes your attitude to making; suddenly you’ve got all these ideas that you could work on slowly and not need to rush them in one or two days. Having a studio enables you to just chip away at work and it doesn’t get in the way of your life. safe to say, we’re enjoying it!
Now, speaking of work, we’ve been thinking more about certain objects in cinema and the value/symbolism those things hold. From working on the chess video (still in progress) we began thinking about the different chess sets in film and how the small differences in the pieces have significance within the story. The relationship between the players and the pieces is very close due to the scale; they are constantly looking down at them and pick them up and hold them in their hands – it’s very intimate. This caused us to think of other intimate, smaller objects within cinema, ones that still carry a lot of narrative weight but don’t necessarily steal focus (e.g. the ring in lord of the rings). Some that we thought were most significant were the totems in inception (the spinning top, chess piece, die, and poker chip), the small origami figures in Blade Runner (unicorn, chicken, matchstick man), the blue box in Mulholland Drive, the business cards in American Psycho.
This particular selection of props are ones which are all about the nature of reality. In Inception, the characters use the objects to make sure they’re not still dreaming; in Blade Runner Gaff uses origami to taunt Deckard by subtly referring to Deckard as an intricate fake;
in Mulholland Drive the blue box represents the repressed memories and awareness of reality that Diane must seal away in order to construct her fantasy world; and in American Psycho the business cards are a physical nod to Patrick Bateman’s minimal grip on reality – all the business cards are identical with only slight variations in the texture of the paper stock and the font lettering yet with each new font, colour, embossment, he shudders and squirms with inadequacy.
We had some thoughts to 3D print some of these, the origami and the totems especially but haven’t done so yet. Part of me thinks I should just do it and see what it’s like and potentially it’ll help with whatever needs to happen next…The blue box and its associated key brought on more thoughts of keys in films and we’ve got a big list below:
Alice in Wonderland Key, The Mondoshawan Tomb Key (The Fifth Element), The Kingdom Key (Kingdom Hearts), The Hatch Key (Lost), The Copper Bones Key (The Goonies), The Cupboard Key (Indian in the Cupboard), The Secret Garden Key, The Key to Erebor (The Hobbit), The Key to Dead Man’s Chest (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest), The Meerschaum Pipe (National Treasure), The Winged Keys (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone), The Fleur De Lis Bank Key (The Da Vinci Code), Cinderella’s Key (Cinderella), The Golden Scarab Beetle (Aladdin), Hellboy’s Arm (Hellboy), The Hunt for Red October Key, Kida’s Crystal (Atlantis: The Lost Empire), The Silver Key (The Silver Key), The Skeleton Key (The Skeleton Key), The Staff of Ra (Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark), and The Key to Zathura (Zathura).
We had a thought that reproducing these and having them on a big key ring or in a bowl or left in a plinth of ledge would feel more complete but that’s only in the very initial stages.