Drains

Here's a view images of some drains I checked out near Gardiner.

Meeting with Damien

Last week I met with one of the members of the brainstrust, Damien, and we thrashed out our ideas over a nice cup of tea and a few too many cigarettes. With his help we refined my concept considerably. It is no longer looking at a destroyed city through focused eyes, but instead looking at it in a more abstract way. I will not make any mention about what is going or why there aren't people around and why everything's so grimy and grotty, but will rather film them and let the viewer decide what is going on. I'm starting to think about it in a more self-reflexive (yeah I cringed when I wrote that too) manner, and examining why this concept attracted me in the first place. Alienation. Isolation. This is how I feel when I'm living in this city sometimes, so essentially while the character will be exploring the darker sides of Melbourne, I will be exploring the darker places of my conciousness.

The Abandoned Car Park

Recently I did some location scouting and found this old abandoned car park which would be perfect for the film, so I decided to take a few snaps. The car park itself is multi-tiered, with the bottom level covered with a generous layer of water, muck and debris. It's so quiet down there, and the feeling definitely matches the tone of my piece.

Moving things along

Exploration is the name of the game folks, and it starts right here, on the web. I've been checking through photos and such on flickr and have been attempting to locate some cool spots to film fragments. So far i have found a place in kensington that will look great on camera, as well as a mental asylum in Bundoora. The various drains I have mapped out to shoot in include Burwood, Moonee Ponds and Kooyong. I have also discovered a great, abandoned underground car park that will be perfect for this project. The next step is creating custom stories for each one and working out shooting plans, as well as taking more photos and posting them here.

I'm now thinking of having everything presented in two ways. One will be a straight up film connected by a VO narration, the other will be the fragmented way that will include a lot more interaction. I can best sum this up with one particular section.

If we go back to the car on the beach scene, presented in the film it will be different sections meshed up, but in the fragmented story it will be an ezedia clip where users can click on different items on the dash and different movies will play. I really want to get on with filming this extremely soon.