idea development

just an update on the collaborative project....we decided to form a crew that will work on everybody's individual projects rather than creating one film, so it is still a group effort, however we will all be helping people head their own projects.


Idea Development, storyboard coming by wednesday:

Stages
The mother/the farmer’s wife
-rolling the dough, looking out the window, in the window is the dog, those who look away and try to see it end up dropping and tired like a hound, heavy eyes, weight of sorrow and fatigue in her eyes, this ghost, hanging in a droop, in the groove of her wrinkles, trying to look to something else, but all that’s there is the dog

The father/the farmer
-bringing down the axe (after the heaviness of the mother…maybe suggesting the downwards force…maybe not chopping a chicken, but can see the blood running off his blade, running off the stump, symbolic chopping but physical blood, the flicker of the screen in his eyes, what he’s done himself, what he did to his son

Chopping of the wood…big rim light functioning like the sun, glare in the camera, water for sweat


The daughter/young woman
-standing together, assault begins with the mother baking the bread, is then on all fours… a bell around her neck?, tears coming down from beneath the pail, starts “bleeding”, just a line…then start to see it spilling from her (all from her), from her mouth too perhaps?, throws her head back as she’s being sucked dry…that’s when the flour begins to fall, see it falling over the girl on all fours too, just piles of dust

The son/young man
-gulping the milk, crazed, crying out, sad, being poured into his mouth as tears roll back from his eyes, a pronounced Adam’s apple

-begins to bleed from the neck, as the father’s chopping the wood more and more, like orgasm, you can’t stop your self but crying because of your addiction…blood mixing with milk, like a chicken with its head cut off, just desperately running around trying to live with no abandon, running off away, into the darkness, dancing (writhing dancing), hands outstretched, spread like a wing flapping, feet stomping in the splashing milk

-the light of life is too bright to bear, going blind, looking into the light
-shaking camera, chaotic movement

-cup first, then like just all out?

Transitions:
The hands of the girl on the floor, the hands of the mother rolling the bread
Milk spilling from the woman, into the man’s mouth
The massaging of the flesh, the massaging of the dough
Boy throwing his head back from the light, from ecstacy and the girl throwing her head back in “death”
The hanging droops down of the dog, the falling of the axe, the boy’s neck
The chopping., the running of blood down the boy’s neck
The boy running around with the axe in his hand, as we see shots that the father is in the chair, just like the daughter is the flour, see her hands, and see the working of the dough (leading that that is their futures)
The flour puffing

See the images of the mother folding the bread, splices of the sex massage but not sure if really creepy or not, images of the old man in a chair from behind,tight shots of the clothed daughter and the son drinking something (is he holding a cup as his prop?) , the baking of the bread again, more violent massaging (violence shown), the mother keeps on looking out the window but there is just the dog, the axe chopping see the son, the daughter beginning to be assaulted (see her pail head full form at her side, the chopping, that son is somewhat crazed, the old man in the chair, shit gets worse and worse, see more of the dog, milk drinking/pouring increases, blood on the axe, running off the stump, milk pouring from her, girl goes to floor, son is crazy, the flour being worked in with the water, start to die, boy starts to go crazy, flour starting to rain down, father in room with images of boy in background, see that he’s mentally watching them , boy running with axe and milk with the image of the chopping/old man, mother with the image of her daughter, looking out the window with tragic stubbornness. Keep going up and up.

The playing of the father behind the son, the mother behind the daughter, the daughter behind the mother, and the son in front of the father

The mother is to become the dog, the daughter is to become the mother, the son is to become the father, and father has nothing but himself and his thoughts


Props/Set
-baking stuff
-bowl, wood rolling pin, board, flour, water → julia’s house +me flour
-michale: metal pail, axe
-counter
-wood stump
-dead chicken → china town?
-red string
-hay → hay bundle?
-projector
-window frame…curtains
sift for the flour –> big one…make it! Big one (frame for window w/ tight netting stretched over it
bins to collect the flour
hella flour/coarse flour
table and chair for son?


Actors
Mother → julia’s mom….back up???
Father → Alexis’s Dad
Woman → Alexis/Julia….Bronowyn???
Young Men → Cody, Mark??
Dog → Tina


Camera Movement (up)


Equipment needed
-Freemont
-Lights → freemont plus extra
-panasonic/vx2000
-tripod
-dolly
-shotgun mic
-c-stands
-

General

-the crazy human barnyard

-man drinking the milk of woman → milk represent life-giving, nourishing force, the food of babies, the female sacrifice, and symbol of womanhood, a gift from the mother to the child, taking away something beautiful women have to give, sexually violent, crude, the woman must submit herself
-men…sexual perversion, violation of the sacred, Oedipus, wish to be infants/children again

-drinking the woman dry, sucking the life from her, like cattle, being milk, “bleeding breasts”

-one woman w/ pail over her head → abu Ghraib prison, one clothed, bleeding breasts

-rolling the dough, massaging the skin (sexual), baking = procreation, like molding of the clay, giving birth to the audience and the film if open with it
-being baked in the oven, cooked into being
-the mother is baking the ashes of the daughters to bake the bread, ashes from being sucked dry

-cycle of life and death, cycle of human sacrifice → woman sacrifice for man, son sacrifice for father

-emptying yourself, changing the eye to reach a life beyond sadness → UP – not as much the focus though

-perversion, sacrfifice, pain, greedy drinking, chaotic running

-double loss of innocence, for men who committed the sin, and for woman who are being violated

-father frozen in the chair, joy luck club → the pain of being old and having nothing but you and your thoughts

-mother constantly looking out the window waiting for something that won’t ever come, but she has to keep believing, to keep folding the dough over and over, to keep baking the bread (reflection of the blood hound)

-projected the image of the mother on the background? Or the father chopping the wood

-done in surreal/theatrical space, with mi nimal components that are all working for reasons, like a factor cycle of perversity and the pain and sorrow that is life. I keep passing around it, with each pass something is revealed, going up, seeing further and further past it?
-something revealed with DOF?
-moving camera up with each pass??