Modern Surrealism.

Although we are fixated on this idea of producing our film in the image of 'old' surrealism and techniques, I thought it would be important to compare these to the modern day surrealist films we see, then to identify the coherent themes throughout both eras of surrealism?

This film below, is a montage of modern surrealism, made by Asylum SFX studio. Using clips from their TV and feature film work, they wove an interesting, thought provoking and emotionally moving artistic statement. I think that the ideas of old surrealism do come through in this video, through strange objects being associated together which seems un-normal. My favourite bit is at 3 mins and 31 seconds, the metaphorical idea of being born and then the idea of flight through to your death is brilliant! ...and the visuals for it are excellent! The uncomfortable feeling we get when watching this man in high speed is like the first bit of our film. What makes it modern is the colours and clearness of footage.

I thought the film below was really interesting as it's a recurring dream that somebody kept having...

Short Stories.

Surrealist. This is the topic that our film is based around, we have discussed ways in which we want to put a narrative together. The best way to do it and how we wanted to put it together, is by using all the old techniques that the earliest of surrealists film writers used.

Such as free association.

However, with the time scale we have been given, it seems as though we are going to have take some short stories and put them together as a dream sequence possibly. Or do things such as take the first line of each short story and write a treatment about them/combining them, which was our other option.

surrealism |səˈrēəˌlizəm|

noun

a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature that sought to release thecreative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.

Below is a link to a website, in which there are lots of short stories put together by lots of different people.

http://www.bibliofaction.com/read/Search.aspx?category=Surreal&category2=Romantic

Below are some stories I picked out:

A GIFT:

http://www.bibliofaction.com/read/ViewStory.aspx?story=0a391d77-4992-4218-bfdb-ad246aa47ad5

THE DREAM:

http://www.bibliofaction.com/read/ViewStory.aspx?story=04283581-4521-4c0d-ae62-fe77dd05cd27

THE CLOCK:

http://www.bibliofaction.com/read/ViewStory.aspx?story=78229f29-e9cc-490e-896e-f796223802a1

THE FORREST OF BEAN:

http://www.bibliofaction.com/read/ViewStory.aspx?story=bc3704ec-3a3c-4450-9caf-f65747a7b658

UPON WAKING:

http://www.bibliofaction.com/read/ViewStory.aspx?story=39f657a6-e11a-4b5f-9e4a-924fa1c77baf

These titles for short stories also kind of represent what I would want to see in our film. A kind of outline of what kinds of things I want to include.

Surrealist FILM. Techniques.

Surrealist Techniques are the next thing I've been looking at in ways to come up with a concept and how to go about filming in a surrealist way...

In every form that surrealism takes place (art,literature,poetry), numerous techniques and games are used to provide inspiration. Many of these are said to free imagination by producing a creative process free of conscious control. The importance of the unconscious as a source of inspiration is central to the nature of surrealism.

Here are some quotes about surrealism:

'No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.'

'Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis.'

Taking these quotes and thinking about them we need to decide as a group how far we really want to take these ideas/techniques. We could apply it to all aspects of the filming, eg. when deciding what gels to use, asking a random person to pick a colour. Although this could just end up looking and being crap.

I also came across this alphabetical list of surrealist films to look out for!