Inspirations

Below are six paintings or pictures that inspired the style of film that I had visioned before we began filming:

These two paintings were done by Rene Magritte who's art was being displayed in a museum in Belgium. I was, since I saw these pieces of art, greatly inspired, not only by the surreal nature of the content of the art, but also in some cases the simplicity. The painting on the right reads "This is not a pipe" when a pipe is being clearly shown. This sort of obscurity and almost random nature of his art has inspired me and a lot of my own work. I was not sure how to incoporate that, but I always like to keep it in mind when making a film. I was more inspired by his vivid use of colours, for instance in the painting on the right, and also the simplicity of the art work, yet full of colour and beauty. This would be more applicable to the more "Lynchian" side of our film, in the latter half, which all of the following images are related to. I was more interested in this aspect as I am more familiar with David Lynch and many other surrealist directors, as opposed to British New Wave whom Richard Ayoade is my only reference point.

Although most of my influences came from artwork, one Japanese photographer has been an inspiration since I saw his art work in 2016 in an exhibition in France. Daido Moriyama's work is so varied in style, but his photo's in colour are incredible, full of life and detail and often very surreal. A lot of his work is outdoors, capturing the life of passersby and Japan itself. However, this picture in particular interested me as it is very isolated and specific. This allowed me to think more about the "Sense of Space" notion behind our work, as well as a potential shot for the bathroom scene we had planned.

This is a comic book cover for a comic named "The Vision". I bought this purely with the intention of keeping the cover. It stood out immediately as the right balance between the British New Wave housewife we had planned and the surrealist David Lynch like elements. The mixture between the boring task of cleaning up and the dead bloody body being the thing she's tidying is what initially caught my eye. It is a reference point whenever I consider the film's production and also a very beautifully drawn image which blends lots of vivid colours with a dull background, imagery perfectly suitable for our film.







 The following two pictures, one
from Satoshi Kon's 'Paprika' (2006) (the right) and the other Salvador Dali's 'Metamorphosis of Narcissus' (the left) are perfect examples of the crowded painting-like cinematography that I wanted for the film. I always envisioned a film which used similar cinematography to that of Stanley Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon' (1975) but with the art style and madness of Salvador Dali's more surrealist work. I have always enjoyed the animation of Satoshi Kon, and his experimental film Paprika has some beautiful imagery similar to Dali, which also encaptualtes this painting-like cinematography. Once again, these are two reference points when shooting the film.

Not only was I inspired by these six images but by a range of short and feature length films, some which links are provided below:

Maya Deren: Meshes Of The Afternoon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSY0TA-ttMA&t=3s
Salvador Dali: Impressions De La Haute Mongolie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEIMY4wBi8
David Lynch: Rabbits - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxKPBLjHAEA&t=852s
David Lynch: Steps - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc-nZbhN_Dw
Luis Bunuel: Un Chien Andalou - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7xTjeLG5SM
Andrei Tarkovsky: The Violin And The Steamroller - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3jgeo9
Jonathan Glazer - Under The Skin