Hello my dears,
So we had our first development meetings with Mark Breslin and Clyde Lawson at ISO today. It was awesome to throw ideas around at those guys as well as discussing technical ways that the idea can actually be achieved.

The original idea of the action happening within the windows of a Glasgow tenement building has stayed the same but the look and movement developed.

The camera may now start as a wide straight on shot at the bottom of the tenement, with cars and buses going past, the world carrying on as normal. Then the camera moves up the building, still keeping the tenement in a straight on wide shot, resting on the 2 top floors, so we can see about 10 windows in the frame. All of them are dark, lights start coming on in time with the keyboard, electro, retro Sega mega drive game type music, revealing the action within the windows.

The action is going to be people and objects becoming iconic imagery from films. The lights get switched on and off faster and faster in all the rooms as some of the characters start to interact with others from different windows until all the lights are on resulting a chaotic scene of movement made up of all the action that was introduced individually. The camera carries on with its movement up the building until it is in the sky exposing a cityscape of Glasgow where the GFF logo appears.

Before the meeting I didn’t want to get too involved in thinking about the action that the characters would perform. I wanted to ask Mark and Clyde how this idea would be possible to achieve, before getting lost in complicated action that wouldn’t work with the technical aspects. I knew I wanted the characters to be placed in front of a green screen and then take photos of random living spaces to slip behind them; this would take out any need for a set for each separate action. I did this type of idea with one of my films Grandma & the Monster (although that was back projected photos of a model city) and it gives a surreal quality to the scene. Also rather than straight filming the action I wanted it to be a moving .gif on a loop, which would add an animated fun feel, and would be easier on me in terms of lighting. Also I really like that Toshiba Timeslice advert that is like a “bullet time” looping .gif. Here’s a link.

Mark and Clyde said how the tenement building itself could obviously be just a photo with the windows cut out and used as a plate. But they came up with the idea of making up the image by collageing it together much like David Hockney’s photographic collages (link here) or like Dave McKean, collaborator of Neil Gaiman. As long as it keeps or even emphasises the essence and charismatic look of a Glasgow tenement building, all is cool. But as I was coming back from the meeting I liked the idea of making an actual small model of a tenement front and photographing that.

Anyway check out this guy: Arno Salters, I worked with him and got stuck on a train from Wales with him once, his style rules and I hope the style of the trailer to look influenced by his work.

Cheers my dears