Process

Here you can see some of our earlier ideas on what the film would be

Here you can see a prop list as well as some early ideas that never came to fruition. We were not as prepared as we should have been and ended up with half the props we actually wanted.

Here are some screen caps from the edit. It shows how detailed some of the early parts of the film were. We used a lot of layers, cropping and repositioning images. There was also a lot of brightness correction and even after my best efforts it is still possible to see the breaks between shots. It was a shame that the light was so prone to changing on the day we were able to shoot.

Involuntary Explained

From very early on we had the idea for our film to be somehow about the psychology of a person. This would be set to ambient electronic music. These elements of our plan stayed with us throughout making the film. Initially we thought that we would make a film that explored the concept of mirrors and cameras, voyeurism and paranoia etc. Our film still does that to an extent, but throughout the filming and editing process we began to have different ideas.

In the end we wanted our film to explore the ideas of the Freudian concepts of the id, the ego and the superego  with the loose narrative idea of the id overcoming the superego and controlling the protagonist.

We begin by introducing different parts of the psyche one by one. The opening shot shows the protagonist sat down in the mirror on the left. This fairly menacing image is meant to represent the repressed id. He is small and hard to make out, the animalistic urges locked away and hidden. The mirror itself is a metaphor for the subconscious and the id is sat there waiting.

In this image we see all five figures on screen at once. The one in the middle represents the ego. He stands tall and is authoritative. He is essentially the protagonist over which the id and the superego are fighting. The camera represents the superego and the figure using the camera represents the superego's ability to moralize. Without a cameraman the superego can only watch, unable to exert any other influence. This idea of the superego going from operated camera to unoperated camera is used throughout. The other two figures can represent a number of things such as narcissism (sat at the mirror) and paranoia (staring into the lens). These figures are sort of mid points between the extremes of the id, the ego and the superego.

These shots are intercut with other scenes that show the camera and the protagonist in the mirror. These foreshadow the event at the end of the film where the protagonist smashes the mirror. Eventually the five figures disappear one by one as if being lost and we are left with just the figure in the mirror which leads us to our next section.

The next section of the film is in colour. This shows a shift from the simple black and white of the more balanced mind to the effects and our protagonist of these parts of the psyche. This section of the film shows the id starting to take over.

Here we have the three main parts of the psyche once again. The id is still sat while the ego is still the tallest and most authoritative. However the superego has taken the place of the id within the mirror. This is symbolic of the id beginning to escape from the subconscious.

In this scene the protagonist (or the "ego") finds a hole in the ground with cereal and milk surrounding it. There is also a camera watching over it. He takes out a spoon and, after pouring the milk, eats cereal from the hole.

We wanted a scene that would show something normal, but twisted and out of place to show the protagonist's mind breaking down. This represents him starting to in to the more animalistic urges of the id. The organized nature of this scene shows that he has not fully lost control, however the ominous building, repeated tones in the music suggest otherwise.

In the next scene the ego finds a pair of headphones hanging from a tree and listens to them. He hears odd sounds. These sounds are actually the sounds of the mirror shattering, reversed and distorted. This scene mostly represents the ego wandering by itself trying to figure things out as the id and the superego are not present. However the sounds through the headphones show that the inside of the protagonist's mind is not a safe place. The branches displayed in the mirror foreshadow the end of the film and suggest a fractured subconscious.

The final section of the film shows the id fully taking over the ego and eventually destroying the superego. The small mirror is to show the reduced importance of the superego. The protagonist smashing the image of the camera in the mirror represents the id's influence fully controlling his actions and the blackout suggests that there is no turning back. Almost as if switching a light off in his mind.

Enter the Void - Gaspar Noé

Enter the Void is a feature length experimental film that I saw in the cinema about a year ago. It had a profound effect on me due to showing me something utterly new and original, but it is not a film I would like to see again fully due to being a fairly painful watch. However I do feel it has been an influence on our film or at least an influence on me and how I wrote the soundtrack.

The film follows a young man who is a heavy drug user and is killed in a police raid in an underground club. The majority of the film takes place in first person and is, as the director puts it, "the story of someone who is stoned when he gets shot and who has an intonation of his own dream."

The film uses very interesting techniques that make the camera feel as if it is floating above much of the action. It is extremely dream-like and the visuals are often psychedelic (helped by the film's use of CG). These techniques were not much of an influence on me in coming up with the ideas for our film though the idea of travelling through someone's mind very much is.

However the most influential thing about this film was it's soundtrack. A mix of electronic pop and experimental music which is also highly electronic. I wanted to create a similarly menacing electronic soundscape for our film. One that relies on repetitive noises and ambient sound rather than beats or traditional incidental music. Harsh sounds are often used and mixed with the more ambient ones in Enter the Void and I attempted similar things in my soundtrack.

Maya Deren - Meshes of the Afternoon

This short experimental film from 1943 by experimental director Maya Deren and her husband had a fairly large influence on our own film from it's themes and use of symbolic imagery to it's style and form.

"This film is concerned with the interior experiences of an individual. It does not record an event which could be witnessed by other persons. Rather, it reproduces the way in which the subconscious of an individual will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience." - Maya Deren


Our film ended up being a similar study of an individual and their subconscious experience. Through similar techniques (having multiple of the same actor in a single shot, the use of symbolic imagery such as mirrors) we attempted to display many facets of the human psyche. Deren presents a series of dream sequences that interlock in which the protagonist is often watching herself repeat actions. We use this same technique in our film to show the different parts of the psyche interacting with each other (or not interacting as the case may be).


Deren's film is interesting to me in a number of ways. I very much enjoyed it's implementation of shadows early on and the use of the camera as sympathetic to the protagonist. There are parts of the film where the camera seems to move with the protagonist and feel the world as she feels it which, in turn, makes the spectator feel it also. Deren uses jump-cuts occasionally to transport people or objects from one part of a shot to another without proper continuity. We also used this technique within our film making our protagonist appear or disappear etc. This technique is a good way to indicate that time does not work the same way within the world of the film and also to juxtapose images and settings next to each other. Deren also uses the technique of cropping to have multiple versions of herself in the same scene.


There are many symbolic images in the film such as the knife, the flower and the telephone. These are used to foreshadow the events later in the film and as metaphors for subjects such as sex and loneliness. In our film we used mirrors as symbolic of the inner workings of the Freudian id and the camera as the superego. These also have other meanings, such as paranoia and narcissism.


Structurally there are some similarities between our films also. Deren layers her dreams on top of each other, destroying any sense of actual time (and, in fact, space through her technique. Something we did not really attempt). These build to the climax of the shocking image of the protagonist having seemingly slashed her own throat. Similarly our images often layer on top of each other and build to the climax of the mirror being smashed.


The soundtrack from Meshes of the Afternoon, while not very appealing to me, did influence how we used sound in our film. Much of the sound in the music is edited to the images and this is something we did very carefully and precisely. There are also sounds in the music of Deren's film that are representative of noises happening on screen. I attempted similar things in my soundtrack. I also attempted to have sections of the music that have no time signatures and, in fact, often different time signatures overlap each other. These combine to create a feeling that time is not working in a way that is familiar to us. Teiji Ito's soundtrack has a similar effect.


I think it's plain to see that Deren's work had a strong influence on our own.