My idea is a little complicated to say the least. A few weeks ago I ended up having an extremely horrifying nightmare in which I was unable to wake up from. In the dream I thought that I had died. I was unable to efficiently communicate with my roommates and it felt like everything in the world had become dry, smelling reminiscent of burnt styrofoam. In the dream I kept trying to find things that normally brought me comfort, but every time that I looked, either they no longer existed, or had lost all appeal to me. I remember thinking in my dream that I wished that I had appreciated all of these things, because now I would be spending the rest of eternity in a monotonous, dreary world. Even my boyfriend and my roommate could not console me. At first I wasn't aware of the fact that I had died, and when I did realize it, all I could do was cry and ask how it happened. Neither my boyfriend or my roommate would answer me, which caused me to feel more isolated. They kept telling me that it was OK, but that was hardly any form of comfort in my eyes. After I woke up from all of this, I was so relieved to realize that it was all just my imagination. That said though, I began to think about how much I take a lot of things for granted. Even with everyday activities, I felt like that I, along with the rest of the world, was just going through the motions and not paying much attention to anything other than my immediate goals. This gave me the idea for the decay project.
Working on a final project for my Time Based Media class, I decided to make a collaboration, and make a two-part video of my experience, one centering on life, and one on death. The life video will be shot as a time-lapse video, where my character performs daily actions with a lack of emotion. As the video progresses, the speed of it will continue to increase until it abruptly cuts out. The scenes in the first video will set up the scenes for the second video, where it will be filmed at normal speed. When my character awakens in the death world, he will be in the same location as the first film, except the entire world will be reminiscent of my dream. The lighting will be solely from candles and I plan on removing any form of comfort from the film. During one scene (which is of my character taking a shower), he will turn on the faucet, in hopes of rousing himself, but it will pour out sand. As another parallel (in the first video there will be a scene in which he walks his dog), he will return to his dog cage in which he finds his dog completely completely vanished. All of the scenes will be directly related to the first video in some form. For the decay part I chose to shoot the entire video within the confines of my own room. I think that this gives the video a more personal feel, as well as makes the idea more confined.
I chose sand as a way to represent time in my work. Before watches and clocks, hourglasses (filled with sand) were one of the few ways to accurately document the passage of time. The project uses the idea of decay to show how throughout our lives, our appreciation for the things around us dwindle; we lose appreciation for the world around us. Death represents the inability to change our appreciation, and grants the person no second chances to find something more meaningful in their past.
The following image is an edited screenshot from the film. I tried a few different effects, deciding to have minor alterations instead of making the film highly stylized. This is one of the many styles that I tried. I ended up not using it in my final piece because some of the effects made the film look too grainy.
-Jason
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