Seed NewsvineUnderstanding The Key Visual Influences On My Filmography
The thing about loving the cinema while growing up is that once you ever get around to actually making movies yourself, you tend to lose an immediate awareness of how seriously embedded that particular niche area of cinema is in your mind, heart and eyes.
(Left: "Ad Hominem" - Right: "Eyes Wide Shut")
The other day I was revisiting Stanely Kubrick's final feature film "Eyes Wide Shut" and I was struck at how some of its city night scenes were pulsing with wet streets, damp air and a sort of surreal quality (something that failed to hit me upon initial viewings). Then I began to realize that my surreal/dream short film "Ad Hominem" articulated those same environments in its exterior sequences. In other words, during most of my productions I was filming with the hands and eyes of my champions of cinema--without really knowing that I was doing so.
(Left: Me filming Julie Crylen close up - Right: Lynch filming Laura Dern close up)
Soon after, I began revisiting my still young filmography and started looking for key traits of the masters of cinema that I adore. An interesting bit I came across was a behind the scenes photo of me filming actress Julie Crylen for an uncomfortable (for the audience) close up of her eyes/upper face in "Ad Hominem."
David Lynch, the surrealist king, was apparently running and gunning it in similar fashion for some shots of his awesome "Inland Empire" a few years ago.
(Left: A lost soul inside of a train - Right: A lost soul on top of a freight train in "Stalker")
As of late, it's apparent that the strong work of Andrei Tarkovsky has been surfacing in much of my content. The last short I made, "Makeshift Correct," which was a video art-experimental mish mash of sights and songs, featured an eerie section of actor Carson Jones, aimlessly riding inside of a CTA train cart looking on as the train pulled him toward a fate that was murky. In Tarkovsky's often overlooked "Stalker" there's a railroad sequence where these men are sitting on top of a train that is pummeling forward. Tarkovsky (and coincidentally me) ended up photographing our subject(s) in more of a profile shot and we let the camera just sit for a sec; this allowed an awkward examination of watching the actor nerve out a natural performance of ambivalence and ambiguity.
Obviously, any independent filmmaker can dissect his or her work into recognizable frames or archetypal scenes from probable historical film influences. But for me, this cinematic catharsis was more of a necessary step forward in knowing what I really want to put up on the screen next.
After all, there's a reason we emulate our masters: We want to preserve what we consider art, what we consider vital.
