To continue my last post, now I’ll tell you how I developed the ideas and theme that I already had in mind for my film. Now, in my opinion, this is the hardest part, because on one side if I didn’t manage to develop the idea and how to convey it to the audience, then I’ll be screwed, because this film will just be a deep fried bullshit. But on the other hand, this is also a fun part because I get to study and really absorb my influences, learn how the great directors narrated their idea through the lenses.
I quickly listed all the directors that I really loved, and soon I was watching some of their works. I went to the library and grab a copy of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “El Topo” and watched it there, while taking notes of events and technical stuff that occured on that movie. Still hungry for more influence, I bought Tarsim Singh’s “The Cell” and David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”, watched them and analyzed them slowly. I didn’t pick these movies by accident, because I knew that these movies have the elements that I want in my film, weird visual, weird storyline and non-linear storytelling. The only reason why I grabbed them is because I wanted to learn how these elements are applied correctly in films.
Around that time, I was also pretty much influenced by the minimalist drone metal work of musician such as Sunn O))), Earth and Boris. I really love how the minimalistic elements in their music works, and I’ve been a fan of them for several years now. Subsequently, I also learned that experimental films are like music, they have motif and variations, motion in screens also have that degree of rhythm. Now if we speak of these slow, minimalistic drone music, then the motif and variations becomes something really highly valued. The music is so slow and repetitive that a single small variation can give a lot effects. I thought that this would be a nice element of the film to have.
So to put everything together, here’s what I did. I wrote all the things that I wanted to say, and then I roughly mapped those things into different scenes, so that every scenes will have different meanings. I already had one thing on my mind that this film will be filled with different weird and symbolic scenes, so I’ll try to follow that rule while making the rough storyboard. While making those scenes on my head, I keep on referencing the note gathered from watching the aforementioned movies. To create the sequences tempo of those scenes, I put the drone-metal influence on the table, making series of movement in my head.
The exhausting process of development came to an end when I finally set the 9 pictures I will have on my storyboard.