Video on the Contemporary World Ideas

IDEAS

Create a space like the room in Gaspar Noe’s ‘Enter the void’ (play around with lighting to create this eerie atmosphere)- a very futuristic, messy area. Very opposed to that of Romeo and Juliet’s era. Choose a monologue that can be recorded and put over the imagery. Could have different couples of people lying on this bed? To show the hopeful diversity that the world has to offer? Have one of them smoking a cigarette to show the slow destruction of the human form. One of the characters can then get out of the bed to look out of the window and either the world is in complete destruction or I can someone edit horrific world events to play ‘through the window’-like if I was to have green screen over the window. Rather like the imagery in the collage I did of the people looking into the city from the windows. Have close ups of rubbish in the room and maybe they have ornaments that can symbolise different elements of the world that are going wrong? E.g.- a little model of a polar bear, a British flag (Brexit) etc... (come up with some better things).

'Enter the Void'- Gaspar Noe

'Romeo and Juliet'- Baz Luhrmann

                                                                                                                               

Look at Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ for inspiration of altering something to the modern day.

Romeo laments his failures in love but I will translate this into lamenting about the failures of the planet.

Extract from Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' 

Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,                             Those making bad decisions

Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!                    Those who are blinded by bad decisions

Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?                Homelessness

Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.                                      Media coverage -

Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.                 

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!                            War/brawling

O any thing, of nothing first create!                                          Adam and Eve/original sin

O heavy lightness! serious vanity!                                             Care more about beauty than the planet

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!                                People mean well but it ends in chaos

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,                                   Natural disasters/forest fires etc

sick health!                                                                                      Epidemics/illness

Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!                                   Nightmarish world

This love feel I, that feel no love in this.                                    There’s no love left in the world

Dost thou not laugh?                                                                    Has it become funny now?

Could just use a close up in Katie’s room? By the window?

Have a time lapse.

And then go back into real time.

Or use this extract over some found footage of things going wrong in the world so it’s a complete juxtaposition (I never saw true beauty until this night)- MAKING THE PLANET SEEM LIKE SOMETHING IT’S NOT- romanticizing it.

Extract from Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' 

What lady is that, which doth

enrich the hand

Of yonder knight?

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!

So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,

As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.

The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,

And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.

Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!

For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

This idea of modernizing Shakespeare's classic even more than Baz Luhrmann is a comment on the contemporary world because Romeo and Juliet is a romantic tragedy, and that’s what the world is becoming. People are romanticizing the fact that the world is going to shit. The monologues in Romeo and Juliet appear beautiful, but there’s always an underlying corrupt meaning behind them. The media is only beginning to really publicize honest imagery of disasters occurring around the world. We, as viewers, have been sheltered. We are finally being shown the corrupt meanings behind the happenings of the world.

I had a play around with rearranging some bedrooms to try and create a similar atmosphere to that in 'Enter the void'. I wanted to try and achieve a vaguely dystopian feel. I wanted to follow a similar colour palette to Gasper Noe so i found some red lights and took some little test shots on my phone.

 

A bit of a blurry photo, but it wasn't meant to be perfect. I simply wanted to get a feel for the room and play around with the colour (shown below).

I then changed to a smaller room to see if i could create a more enclosed space to put more focus/emphasis on the characters i will have in the film (shown below).