I made some mood boards for the stylised scenes of the film and wanted to share them with you here, these scenes were especially creative and personal to my process and required a lot of thinking.
This was a mood board for these scenes as a whole, some of the images seem to have little correlation and others are obvious influences but each makes me feel something that relates to one of the ideas or the atmosphere I wanted to create overall.
I'll now break it down in to the actual scenes that we show in the film, they all have a theme and relate to one of the artist or group that they are displayed as an opening to. I would have loved to include key people from the documentary for these, but instead mostly they are represented by models in a studio setting. This gave me more flexibility as I only had the studio access to shoot this section before I had interviewed most of the artists, I had only filmed with Mathew Simms (in Tasmania, on a whim) at this point but I was confident about the relation of these scenes to the topics surrounding each artist/subject as I had met them all and discussed these.
I should also mention that we shot all of these set-ups between 10am-5pm including set-up and down times and it was truly exhausting! our scheduling was incredibly tight and I worked through the lunch break but we managed it all!
Amber's Intro:
I didn't create a moodboard for this set because it was solid enough in my head before I needed to. I had the idea of painting on the glass and the camera movement in my head, so I created the perspex pieces (held at the sides) in advance and improvised the practical painting on the day. I really wanted to create an atmosphere that felt dynamic yet calm and like everything was fitting in to place as I painted, a metaphor for my own catharsis found in creating. All of these scenes really acted as a way for me to express my own catharsis through the filmmaking medium crossing over with fine art and production design with these spontaneous yet elaborate sets.
2. Nature & Immersion - Mathew Simms
This piece represents Mathew's connection with nature and solitude, he is able to be truly himself in a rural setting with basic amenities and lots of art materials. I had the idea of this leaf curtain very early on and constructed it myself by dyeing crepe paper with turmeric (in my shower in halls at university!) pipe cleaners and then wrapping the individual paper leaves around snd glueing in place. We resulted with this beautiful moving curtain of leaves that could be shaped and would move with a faint waft of air. I included pictures of our lighting tests in the mood board above, Gabriel Monteregge did the lighting for the film and we described it as painting, he has a real gift for the craft and injected life in to my ideas with beautiful colours and practical effects.
I had lots of random ideas for the make-up which ended up not all being right for the harsh lighting, so we opted for a natural look here and focus on the leaf curtain rather than even more on Babil's face! Nicola Sachs, my makeup artist was so fantastic at making quick judgements last-minute and being creative with limited time.
3. Sensory Experience - Shivani Khoshia
Shivani's work really struck me at the time as quite linked to the human body as well as exploring the mind and unique experiences like memories. I had also recently seen Kusama: Infintity Dir. Heather Lenz and was very inspired by her abstract shapes and the meditative quality to them, so that influenced the patterns we drew. Learning about Kusama's personal experience with art for healing made her a poignant influence for this detail. Shivani had been exploring painting on people or mannequins as her canvases, so it only seemed right to do that on our model for this scene. Shivani asked to come and watch on-set for the day, so I invited her to be in the frame drawing on Babil with me which was really a interesting way to start our journey on the film together. We filmed her interview shortly after.
4. Identity & Culture - Gabriel Choto
This set was very much about viewing ourselves through many lenses, the many guises we each adopt throughout our lives and how we can understand ourselves through our art. Gabriel really uses his art to connect with his culture and explore memories, potential alternate realities or share inner truths. I wanted to create an image of Abby that reflected the different paths art can take to representing people. I collected lots of different glass vessels and surfaces to arrange and obscure different parts of her.
Throughout our very short shoot of this scene, I was waiting til we got some really great distortion of Abby's face and this was the moment where I knew we had the take. These layered vases filled with water really stretched her features ad she looked around inquisitively.
5. Grief & Freedom - Molly
For this set, I combined two ideas: one (above) was for the composition of two linked people and the idea of one unlinking and leaving the other behind, very much a symbol of loss, and two (below) was this entanglement of wool and string.
I got the idea of these tangled threads from the top right photos, one shot by Harley Weir of Rhianna & the other of Levi Aluede by Dylan Mascis (two people I now collaborate with). This styling/concept idea made total sense when combined with the fantastic knitwear piece from Jean Oberlander (pictured centre) which she kindly lent to me for the shoot. I liked that the visual of the tangling pieces gave the set some movement as well as symbolising the emotional confusion, weight and such which we are all submerged in. The visual represents grief specifically in Molly's case, as a young person who lost her father and now has a fantastic ability to switch off by making art in a fairly concentrated, meditative fashion.
It was fantastic to work with Izzy Ayres and Poppy Vinciguerra, my friends who are a couple, as they had the chemistry to make this simple and short scene really work without much preparation. Both are fantastic artists of their own right, I was really blessed to work with such a broad range of creative individuals on this film! Nicola also did some fantastic make-up here, I wish we had time for a close-up! but you can see a hint of it in this shot.
6. Trust & Shared Experience - Corrie Foreman - The Meath - West Street Potters
This final theme encompasses the last three subjects of the documentary, Corrie is a tattooist and I really admire the confidence and trust she shares with her clients in her practice. She is a more experimental tattooer than the traditional works we may associate with the craft and sometimes does improvised pieces or collaborates with her clients to create a unique tattooing ritual experience.
The final two groups link to this image through the sharing of making, the final theme is really about the benefits of making together, no matter what relationship that may be. Some are incredibly intimate, like a permanent art ritual on the body, but others are simply sharing a workspace and both are fantastic.
I'm not quite sure where this image really came from but it was stuck in my head. I built the frame of the hanging gauze form from bamboo canes and it didn't turn out to be as solid a frame as I had hoped but it ended up really working as a twisting shape as it moved. I also really loved how this scene came together collaboratively as well, I had never really envisaged it being overlaid like Charlotte (My fantastic editor!) tried but I instantly loved the dreamlike feel it has and it stuck.
Thank you for reading this far if you're here! I hope you found it interesting to see more of my process!