I once had no fears None at all
And then when
I had some
To my surprise
I grew to like both
Scared or brave
Without them
The thrill of fear
Thought I'd never admit it
The thrill of fear
Now greatly enjoyed with courage
When I once was
Untouchable
Innocence roared
Still amazes
When I once wasInnocent
It's still here
But in differentplaces
Neurosis
OnlyAttaches
Itself toFertile
Ground Where it can flourish
The thrill of fear
Thought I'd never admit it The thrill of fear Now greatly enjoyed with courage
INNOCENCE
A Short Brain Music Film
by Neil Slade
Music by Bjork
Click on the arrow above to play the video
This is a short music video I prepared for a Bjork
"Send us your
video" competition for a song on her new
album.
The film,
per the lyrics, illustrates fears as common archetypes: bugs, heights, open
spaces, closed spaces, predator and prey, sharp things-- as well as a method of
overcoming fears, i.e. self-reflection (crystal ball). The video culminates with
our girl in a silver suit of armor, as a metaphor for self-reflection and
self-knowledge as a shield against fears which return as archers, whose attempts
are thwarted by an empowered "Innocent".
There were about 15 people total involved in the production of this video, but
primarily 14 year old Sade Moore as the main
subject, as well as her mother and grandmother and many of my best friends.
We shot
about five hours of raw material over a 7 day period, each day about 6-14 hours
each. It should be noted that we had planned a full month for shooting, when
suddenly Bjork announced that the deadline had been moved up three weeks,
leaving us with one week to do the entire project.
The project was done on a shoestring budget, however utilizing my Panasonic
DVX100 camera at 24fps (like film), and edited on Sony Vegas 7 on my hand built
PC. I will add that appearances can be deceiving-- in the last portion-- the
outfit for the mountain climber guy archer alone cost me $450, and you see him
for all of one second. We returned much of the "purchased" props to the store
when this was feasible-- including the mountain climbing rope, pickaxe, and
other similar items which I had little use for. Hey, what do you think this is,
Zeotrope Studios?
Many
key items, such as the funnel hat was found at local garage sales, including the
butterfly wings. Sade and her friend made her silver reflective suit themselves,
using reflective window Mylar from Home Depot, and glued it on to her clothes.
It was quite hot.
The
forest scene took a full day to shoot, and employed the largest number of people
at one time, about 12 that day. We drove to a local nature reserve that
resembled Sherwood Forest for our take on the fearless William Tell legend.
The
glass crystal ball was loaned by my next door neighbor, and provided the
"self-reflection" motif. The lighting effects on the sphere were actually done
with a LED bicycle light borrowed from Sade's next door neighbor at the last
second, and held by her grandmother crouching at Sade's feet.
Much
of the ideas of the film literally leapt into our lap, as if by magic-- and the
film, inspired by the lyrics and my knowledge of fear and brain function,
virtually wrote itself.
What's up with all the stuff in the last part
with the electronics test equipment warehouse? In interviews, Bjork herself
refers to the "electrical energy" in Volta album (voltage-- get it?)
The video reference here is in regards to electrical energy inside the body and
brain-- The Bjork character is holding the HUGE vacuum tube, personifying
electric energy in the body/brain, complete with high tension towers in her
hair.
Fear- the topic of the song-- is the movement of electrical energy within the
brain, specifically from the amygdala backwards into increased electro-chemical
energy flow into the r-complex (core "reptile brain", as coined by Dr. Paul
McLean. See my page FEAR
The
bubbles up on the mountain make the best story of the film--- we were driving up
a road, around 11,000 feet elevation at the time, (on the highest paved road on the planet), and a convertible in
front of us had bubbles flying out of their car. We pulled them over, and asked
if we could buy the soap bubble wand and jar from them to use in our film-- and
voila. Total cosmic connection when we needed it, as the bubbles mirrored the
glass sphere and pendant in the rest of the film.
Yes,
that is an actual two foot long vacuum tube in the attic of Fistell's
Electronics in Denver, which was crammed full of probably the largest collection
of electronic test equipment in the world. Sade's mom is wearing my homemade
Bjork mask, taken directly from an image on one of her Podcasts for Volta. I
have never seen a radio vacuum tube so huge, and probably never will again.
All of our
locations were roughly within a 60 mile radius of Denver, Colorado-- from 11,000-12,000
feet up near the top of Mt. Evans (14,000+ feet at the top), to the flat plains of the Colorado prairie
east ofBuckley Air Force Base. The
woman with the butterfly net was someone we had only met the day before at the
neighborhood coffee shop, who instantly agreed to be in our film when she heard
what we were doing. She did the scene the next day, then disappeared- like a
butterfly perhaps-- and we never saw nor heard from her again.
Sade was actually
buried up to her chest in the garden in my backyard for the
scene "Neurosis grows in fertile ground..." after we dug a pit
for her to get in. She did not like the bugs crawling all over her
whatsoever, and it took some doing to get her to stay put for about
20 minutes to do the shot. The giant ant was a temporary wood
sculpture at the Botanic Gardens in Denver, and is about 20 feet
long and 10 feet high.
The
film was a virtual miracle of cosmic planning and Brain Radar, for which we have
only one explanation--- click click click forward of collective amygdali.
We shot up until the day before the video deadline, and I did all of the editing
in one session on the last day of the competition, from 11AM until 11PM. Yes, it
was submitted within the deadline. Still can't believe I did it in one sitting
with only hours to go, absolutely insane, but I don't believe I could have done
a better job had I a week to do it in.
I, for one, enjoy animation very much, including computer animation, but where I
believe our video actually ILLUSTRATES the story and lyrics, I have been hard
pressed to find any of the finalists did this at all in Bjork's Innocence Video
competition, except in the most abstract sense. Dare I say, with the exception
of the appearance of the Volta sculpture image in many of the videos (which
reminds me of a big blob of bubble gum), one could have put the various entries
to any piece of music and they would have made as much sense in interpretation.
We made a concerted effort to actually illustrate the song and theme of the
lyrics.
Live action
has SOUL and HEART and touches you in a way that I rarely see in animation, and
it is nearly always absent in computer animation.
I appreciate the efforts of anyone doing something creative, including all of
the other participants in this competition. Regarding the contest however, I am not sure of their criteria and method for selecting the finalists- but
alas, this is the nature of competitions (chaos pretending to be good judgment),
and in my opinion, competitions as a rule have little to do with quality or art,
so we do not feel as though the contest outcome reflects at all on our work and
its value. We were not even included as finalists for the competition-- but
ultimately this, even, will be to our benefit. Frontal lobes it....and
understand.
Parts of the video go fast-- a few parts linger on a shot-- I like this-- please
consider why I may have had a couple of shots that go for more than a few
seconds-- pay attention, try to understand what I am saying... Life is not all
bam bam bam bam .....it has contemplative sections in it, and so does my film.
Someone said the silhouette of the jaguar was like a scene from the Exorcist--
quite possible, but this came as a surprise to me, as I've not seen that scene.
We are all very very proud of our short film, and I am especially proud of
everyone's contribution and efforts, especially Sade Moore, who worked extremely
hard for this film, displayed amazing dedication and focus on this project, and
she is deserving of the highest congratulations. The film is beautiful because
of her foremost. She will not go un-noticed by those people who recognize true
talent and beauty.
Anyway,
all art appreciation is subjective anyway-- you like what we did, you don't--
hey doesn't matter. Nobody liked Van Gogh for a hundred years.
I'll repost soon after I've put my own music to the film... and we have many
more shots and I will do an extended version soon. Enjoy.
Driving down, in complete fog, 15 foot visibility,
and a 1000 foot vertical drop 5 feet off the road, I could not pass by this 20
foot high wall of snow, a virtual glacier, without filming. This is April (Sade's
mom) running with the Prey Mask. Sade was in the car, suffering from exhaustion
and altitude sickness, so April did the role here, almost in complete darkness.
The car headlights provided the illumination. Elevation here was somewhere near
12,000 feet.
The sun had set moments ago, but we still had lots
of cloud cover (behind the still camera here), and it made a great close up of
the mask. This is at Summit Lake, way above tree line. The road behind in the
distance goes up to 14.000 feet, the highest paved road anywhere. Note: The
clouds are BELOW us, and what we had to drive through to get back down (photo
above)--- I knew the road well, but Julia, April, and Sade figured they were
going to die.
Sade literally standing at the edge of a cliff.
We didn't use this shot in the short, but may in our
extended version. In the film version, it looks like she has actually fallen
onto a rock and is laying down, rather than obviously standing vertically here.
Our very first shot of the production, and turned
out to be the first shot of the film. Typically I edit in the order in which we
shoot anyway. We discovered that Sade chose a shirt to wear that perfectly
blended in with the sky and clouds. I forgot my $650 Bogen/Manfrotti tripod at
home, and ended up buying a last-ditch $29 totally cheap amateur wobbly tripod
at Office Max on the way to the mountains-- amazingly it worked.
More close ups. We found that the scenery looked
very much like Iceland.
It's clear in this still that we are VERY high up in
the mountains.
Rocky Mountain Sheep cross the road on our way up.
Sade wearing the silver hat that will play a big
part in the last scene. We were all rather freezing by now, and had spent all
day up above tree line. There was snow, then fog, then a total white out,
then sunshine-- all changing from one minute to the next. Made for a perfect day
of shooting!
