[-empyre-] Lady in Wight- talking pictures

[eliza fernbach]

Hello,
Christina suggested I think about how Neal's process relates to the way I have been working on my latest film "Rumour Becomes A Line"

...The most potent connection I can see right now is the process...I too was inspired by text. A poem by the Canadian Anne Simpson whose collection "Light Falls Through You" includes a series on the Trojan War. 
The moment I have been exploring in the film which is now in post production, is a short sigh following Queen Hecuba's surrender to the death of one of her 19 children.

The moment is now blown out to be six or seven minutes long and like Neal I have spent a lot of time culling images. Everyone does indeed experience time in a particular way and I like the idea that moment can become an hour under someone else's gaze. There is also an implied moment explored in the film. The action of closing shutters or doors and leaning against them is a visual cliche in cinema now. Femme fatales and damsels in all sorts of distress have paused against doors they close behind themselves in just about every possible situation the cinema allows. There is an image though that has never been shown but exists in the minds of viewers almost automatically...That is the close up of the hands behind the chracaters' back.
We've never seen it but we know it somehow. I ended up shooting the shot from above the Queen as she closed the shutters and still haven't quite captured the picture that is still lodged in my mind...happily in reaching for that particular moment, the process revealed a stream of much more dynamic scenes...and a film was born.
I also agree with Neal about reflection revealing direction...The theme of travel in my films would appear self evident just in a scan of the titles ( "Commute", "Baggage", "Rest Stop"...) but I hadn't really acknowledged my fascination with the timeline of life and the ways it is navigated until I had to present the films together...
In the short loop "Starting at the end of the Line" I connected the line and it remains eternal for me now...we walk the line of a life, we become the line, the line forms us and we walk it again...I am my shadow is me I am my shadow...

Gosh Christina - thanks for your suggestion.
Happy '09 everyone,
eliza