"Majorelle Shell", inspired after the colour paint created by Jacques Majorelle and revitalized by Yves Saint Laurent (from his work in Morocco) brings you a film about self discovery, realization and understanding of the world we inhabit from a surrealist perspective.
Winner of the Manchester School of Art - Best Film of 2016 in Film-making.
Winner of the Manchester School of Art - Best Film of 2016 in Film-making.
Written, filmed and directed by Usman Shah, this is a stop-motion, pixilation film that uses expressionism, vibrant symbolic imagery with historical and contemporary references to convey the symbolism within this fictional-narrative, artists film.
With sound and original music composed by Joshua Spencer that brings the images to life.
With sound and original music composed by Joshua Spencer that brings the images to life.
This film portrays a visual metaphor for what we perceive as our existence, and the conventions and parameters that are within it.
Are they to be challenged or obeyed? And what can be found beyond?.
I collaborated with students from other universities around the UK, my set design supervisor studies interior design at the University of Salford and art assistant from the University of Brighton, my sound designer from the University of Leeds, my costume designer from MMU doing fashion and technology, some of my music samples were made by a family friend and 98% of the film was all due to my own Dad who built the set, went around fundraising for the film, being the safety officer, driving us to our locations, sorting out the finances in the film and did the difficult job of being the sole producer for the film whilst I focused on the creative aspects of the film. I myself took on many other roles within the production; lighting my own set, designing everything, choosing the colour schemes and prop selection appropriate for each scene. We did have several technical issues and one occasion where the electricity on-set didn't work.
Most of the elements of the set was hand-made, or taken from home or completely make-shift; be that our Fresnel lights, to our "Wall of Doors" made out of actual doors that can open up fully to move set pieces in and out, to spending 10 hours applying various different shades of blue to the wall of strings so the camera could film inside the set without being obstructive to the aerial camera (DIY rigged up with a tripod head). The "Wall of Doors" specifically was made of a mix of materials, from actual doors that we cut up, to cardboard, thin sheets of pinewood and MDF and everything from the key locks to the door handles where all bought from the local DIY stores or B&Q - we also for the door frame that was in our location shoots used lightweight softwood so we could easily assemble and dissemble it as we framed the shot and took it whilst travelling. I also considered using wooden floorboards for the floor of the set to make the film look more aged and rustic, but for the comfort of the actors carpet was chosen; and finding the right colour carpet to match the set was important and a difficult task too.
The Purpose of the Project.
The purpose of the project was to create a end of year film for the Manchester School of Art - as part of my degree in film-making.
THE PROCESS
It's been an interesting journey since the start of my third year from the research and development (R&D) module of my course to my major. From originally thinking of doing a stop-motion sci-fi film with a "Lost in Space" vibe to more of just a lost on planet earth film instead. I still wanted to stick with a sci-fi or fantastical element in my film, something of the unknown and unexplained, and the thought of 'what happens after we die' sprung to mind.
Eventually I conceptualised the narrative of the journey of our souls after we passed away, and based it on scientific and religious study. What my R&D film ended up being was an exploration between Science, Religion and Philosophy from a nihilist stand-point; the duality of life and the Multiverse theory. My dissertation continued with film subtext and interpretation, which reflected the films messages and what they were trying to say directly and indirectly. Therefore my major would progressively encompass all these elements within the film-making technique, colour palette, tone/mood and mise-en scene and sound. I watched the film "The Holy Mountain" (1973), to try and understand how abstract concepts can be put on a visual medium.
The conceptualisation of the film, from thought to paper to visual storytelling proved to be very challenging. How could you apply scientific theorem and religious eschatology to a tangible medium which portrays an expressionistic, surrealist, mix of stop motion animation and live action film?
Such as the writings of Purgatory, taken both from the Bible and the Qur'an: "It is We who give life and make to die and to Us is the homecoming", (Quran 50:43). Furthermore attaching it to the concept of a parallel world, which inspired this film by the Theory of Schrödinger's Cat and the Copenhagen Interpretation ("50 Quantum Physics Ideas You Really Need to Know" - Joanne Baker), in which all the power of the theory is put into the 'observer' - this can be interpreted in the filmic aspect as the audience watching the action onscreen, a voyeur of sorts.
In accordance with the Cat Theory, scientist Bohr's follows with the supposition that "the feline is in the superposition of states both alive and dead at the same time, only when the box is opened is its fate sealed" which asks the question, whom observes the universe to ensure those existing in it continue to exist, or are we dead inside the box?
That's one of the reasons why I wished to include boxes in my film and also physically encase the lead character in the large "Majorelle Shell = blue box" room, it acts as a portal to the next stage of "heaven/hell/purgatory/parallel universe" and to open it, risks its saviour or doom - which is perfectly apt for the fact that that this film is a prequel to the R&D film.
The Multiple Universes theory (in which physicists use this theory to explain the other cosmological coincidences in the world) also inspired the idea that strange things or events that happen to the protagonist can come from an outside influence, which is why I have the notes sliding into the room instructing "Doll" to do things and choosing things that are "Yours" and leaving alone the things that are "Not Yours" - and having him 'magically' being transported to different locations; the beach, or the cliff side when he opens the door, he's not in control of these things - but I leave ambiguous as to what is actually occurring, is it a memory that we are seeing or is he being physically moved?. I thought it would be characteristic to add to that by making the doors embodied within picture frames.
I split into the environment in which the actor will be in, the set I built would be the physical idea of each piece of writing, so; since purgatory is a "waiting room", the set would undoubtedly be a room for the character to "live" in, the wall with the doors would become the "window/door" to another universe, parallel dimension, or just another form of existence; with "the silent girl" on the other end of the door.
It gives "Doll" the protagonist in the film, an inclination that he may not be the only one undergoing the same experience, as if to say, everyone is going through life, and these rooms are the channels before we reach the "other side". The tilt old wooden panelled wall symbolizes our mentality, cracks to resemble our fragility and it's tilted on one side is to represent that our view of what we think we know may be skewed to some extent, it's not entirely accurate and it's slowly collapsing around us; this is another symbolic representation of memory. For as we get older, our memory fades away also the universe is also fragmenting around us as it gets wider and stretches, so I also chose to use an over emphasis of extreme wide angle shots throughout the film, although it's very subtle, we do start off looking down at the character from a 22mm lens, then as the film progresses, it goes to a 17mm, then a 14mm lens and finally a 10mm lens, with the letterbox squeezed to exaggerate the stretch and distance we have now from the character, which also brings a heightened emotional moment of suspense to the ending.
We began with pre-production, writing up the story and script, myself and my screeplay editor Ella both wanted to try and follow the themes, theories, ideas and research, we looked at string installations - which we incorporated to the set, inspired from Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" from the Tesseract scene where protagonist is surrounded by streams of lit up lines to represent walls that he could see through. It is metaphorical for our "life lines" but also thematically significant - how we let memories easily slip away and the growing sign of age on our bodies.
From a directorial perspective, I wanted to create the idea that we are watching "Doll" secretly and as a voyeur almost, an invasion of a person's privacy - plus cinematically it also created a soft edge filter look that is similar to Robert Richardson's cinematography and gives it a feeling of looking through an old lens. The colour of the room is also symbolically significant, I chose it very specifically to coincide with the colour that looks blue, but under various light sources, takes different hues, and can almost become purple.
The name of this colour is called "Majorelle Blue", named after Jacques Majorelle, made infamous by his garden in Morocco, refreshed by Yves Saint Laurent, the colour has spiritual significance with me, plus I had it imported from Morocco as it's impossible to replicate. I wanted it to also mirror Jarman's "Blue" (1993) in which he speaks about his ails from HIV and AIDs and became partially blind as a cause of the disease, and therefore made the entire film of just the colour blue, which also brings a subtle nuanced link towards my writings in my dissertation about view points on sexuality and adds to the mood and tone to the film, which also contributes nicely to the overall subtext (as my dissertation discusses subtext in films) of my major film, in which the existence "Doll" lives in, is a impressionist interpretation of our own life/existence in this world, and all the things he comes to experience and learn or understand, be it about science, maths, music, art, writing, religion, power, suffering, authority and disobedience, feelings, connection, other people, love etc. it all is represented by a physical prop, "the pointed star orange bible" or the record player in the corner of the room, or the birdcage or empty picture frame to the clothes "Doll" wears or stores in his suitcase or the notes giving him instructions, to the other elements in the story, his distorted "memory" of the beach (heaven or freedom), falling off the cliff side (fall from redemption) or the random turtle (symbolism of endurance and growing wisdom).
The origami (influenced by Akira Yoshizawa) was a focal piece of symbolism, not only was it a prop for the actor to interact with, but as a director I felt the inclusion of origami shapes was important to represent the rebellion that "Doll" tries to do against his existence, he does this by ripping out pages from the orange bible and makes beautiful and creative shapes, be it animals (butterfly representing a transformation, inner journey or dream) or a flower (grown from the muddy darkness into the path of enlightenment), all of which symbolize the character's personality and emotional yearning for something other than the room he inhabits. Also using white paper was important as white in Japan symbolizes the colour of death.
To fully understand how pixilation could work for real-time acting I was shown the film "The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb" - (Dave Borthwick, 1993) and it was very interesting; the film-making methodology Borthwick used gave me an understanding about what rules I should apply to my own film-making and if I should or shouldn't break them. For example, his consistent use of static shots, then cuts to either medium, close ups or extreme close ups to convey change in scene and emotion with the characters was very important for me as moving a camera whilst doing pixilation photography is extremely difficult, and near impossible to get exact sequences unless a computerized motion-control rig is being employed. So I kept that rule throughout my film-making process; in order to capture the subtle emotional moments, static shots was key.
Borthwick also uses long exposures to get the same light whizzing effect that I have used to symbolize the "soul" or a "greater power", his use tones down the light brightness in order to enhance colour, in my film I do something similar but allow at the edges of the lights to still have some bright clarity and contrast to them. Also I mixed the lights with LED, candles, my mobile phone and small bicycle lights.
What I like about the visual medium and effect pixilation, is that it tweaks how real-time works and looks, making it feel out of sync or distorted, the constant shakiness in the moving image, makes the image itself come alive and be almost a sentient entity which from a directorial stand point enhances the themes of life and death within my film. Plus the addition of sound at a higher rate/speed than the 12fps that my film is running at also adds to the surrealist distortion of reality that encompasses the overall theme that my film portrays in its narrative and imagery.
What I did was design and build up an entire studio style rig of lighting for my set - where I also spent several days testing the different luminosity (lumens) of various bulbs and colour temperatures of different bulb types (incandescent, fluorescent, LED, CFL or halogen) and then assort them in a structure that would benefit me when it came to the principle photography and allow me to get a near perfect exposure of raw footage that I could manipulate in post.
The arrangement that I finally came down to was a combination of 40w, 60w, 100w, 150w and 200w bulbs to light my film set and everything in it. I also chose incandescent (not entirely energy efficient) but they did have a colour rendering index of 98-99 which is perfect and nearly replicates the CRI of the sun, which is 100%. I did use a mix of LED and CFL and fluorescent bulbs, but only as a catch light or special effect. The incandescent were my primaries for my key lights, fills and rim lights. Moreover we made our own DIY Fresnel lights.
With my film I have incorporated a wide range of cinematographic techniques inspired from practitioners such as Robert Richardson, Roger Deakins and the late Andrew Lesnie - and example of this is the use of a strong backlight on my characters or having lots of lights streaming through the cracks in the walls of the set as they prove extremely useful in telling the story, highlighting the important elements within the shots and gives excellent contrast to the mood of the character within the scene and also brings about a 'heavenly' presence or one of 'being watched' and aesthetically provides a very nice contrast to my character on-screen. Plus it brings a contrast towards the lines coming in through the wooden walls (symbolic of bars of a cage).
But in this case, for my film it was a technique that was vital to represent the set pieces within the blue room and to show how important they were to the character, and to give a good sense of isolationism with the character and represent a religious sanctity within certain elements in the room by bathing them in white 'holy' light, especially the table with the 'orange bible' on it - an emulation of a pedestal or podium.
Furthermore I found it equally as important to give a rule for how the audience should treat the main character, we; the audience are the observer, the eyes of the creator and I wanted us to for the majority of the film see the protagonist from a distant POV, we don't necessarily want to connect with him, not immediately at the start of the film at least. I want him to feel alone, solitary and in a state of monotonous melancholy, (use of repeated shots/montage, influenced by "Requiem for a Dream" - Darren Aronofsky, 2000, to present to the audience that "Doll" has been living this life for a very long while and is a constant throughout his existence) and wide angle lens for close-ups to display that detachment, a cinematic trademark associated with Peter Jackson.
Technically it allowed me to get sharp close-ups of the talent at mid range f-stops and still have that beautiful bokeh effect synonymous with high cinematic/production value. Also I used time-lapse photography during the sunset of the beach scene to bring a dream-like transition to the next set of sequences.
Editing the film was a lot more tricky, the footage was entirely RAW stills, totalling to over 50,000 frames, which took up over 1.5TB's of data on my hard-drive. I'd spend 2 weeks just rendering the frames into an editable format and applying a very basic grade to the images, then another week put the film together and tidying up. I used Adobe Premiere pro to cut the film together, Lightroom for conversion and a basic grade, Photoshop for cleaning up the frames, creating the titles, After Effects for the roto-scoping and some of the more difficult masking and finally premiere for any masking I missed out on.
Sound, done on Avid Pro Tools and recorded with Sony ACID - also took a week to do almost till the actual deadline date. A lot of masking and refinement was done to the visuals, so roto-scoping was also vital to make the film look as clean, professional and polished as possible.
Sound, done on Avid Pro Tools and recorded with Sony ACID - also took a week to do almost till the actual deadline date. A lot of masking and refinement was done to the visuals, so roto-scoping was also vital to make the film look as clean, professional and polished as possible.
Preliminary edits and storyboards where done and edited using Sony Vegas Pro 11.
The grade of the film took most of the time to get right and personally approved, as can be seen from the many different grades I have done on the right as I wanted to convey emotion through colour correctly, plus colour was a very important thematic element within my entire film, everything from the colour of the set to the props/costumes/lighting and final image grade had to have a purpose and feeling that effected the audience, not to mention look aesthetically attractive too. For example I wanted the beach to have a tone and mood of freedom and heightened elation, therefore my colour palette was vibrant colour, and with the golden hour being taken advantage of, I remembered paintings by J.M.W. Turner, specifically "The Fighting Temeraire" and it evoked a sense of calm and tranquillity that I wanted "Dolls" character to be surrounded with in that small fleeting moment.
Building the set took nearly a month to do, with principle photography taking another intensive month.
The set design, was similar to what would be made for theatre. As the director, I wanted to convey an environment that had a familiar sense of the world we live in, but to make it dated and decadent, by mixing props (old Victorian candle holder with a 1970's vinyl record/cassette player, a 1980's gas heater, a 1940's blue suitcase and to contrast that with modern casual fashion for costume by using the T-shirts and then blue/grey striped pyjamas for the sequences on the beach and cliff side - hearkening back to another time and bringing an ambiguity as to whether we are watching a memory, the present or future, also a small homage to "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" - Mark Heyman (2008) a film with a theme and genre similar to my own in some respects of a people/person treated differently and controlled.
The architecture I wanted it to be a homage to German expressionism, as the style and design brings a gothic and unnerving aesthetic to the films imagery along with my heavy use of chiaroscuro; using some influence from Tim Burton films such as "Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (2007), but more so from "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" - (Robert Wiene, 1920) and the use of shapes and angles, I mostly took the idea of light as highlights seeping through the cracks of my set as an energy source and to make my character feel encased within something greater than itself.
