Of Tigers and thoughts
Ever since last night my old and as of yet unfinished graduation project is burning in my mind more vivid than ever. I always felt bad that it's been lying still, limping in the back of my mind somewhere since last year august. I never was happy with the changes I made from my original strong view and vision on what it should be to accommodate everyone in school, teachers, colleagues and very skilled people from the comicmakers forum. When I last saw my original storyboard I could nearly cry to see all the strength and original vision shattered, thrown away and badly resurrected in the final graduation proposal. Yes, it was very nice and all for the teachers, but it had become of ghost of my original intentions. While the same has happened three years ago with my Beyond the Window movie (which turned out very nice and moving, but a 180 degrees turn from what I original intended) I had found peace with that and made it work. Junglebook, I never could get to work as I couldn't get past it and it became a coat of too many fabrics, old and new and in the end it wouldn't even work if you poked it with a stick. I feel horrible looking at the last storyboard version now, feeling, seeing my chaotic and stressed state of mind, tricking myself into believing anything was an improvement.
No more.
And the strangest thing is, it was the original soundtrack inspiration that pulled me back. More strange is, that it's been the second time that that has happened. Originally Beyond the Window came to life from new sketches, an old short comic I did about a boy in a wheelchair and, as always one piece of exceptional music that stirs my mind into composing animation. Music has always been my greatest inspiration to visual a story, and with Beyond the Window that was the song 'One' from Metallica. Though not the original version, but an instrumental version of the song by acoustic band Apocalyptica. It told the original dark, raw and bittersweet story true to life in my mind against the much sweeter dreamy version that Beyond the Window in the end became. During my work on the movie Daan, a classmate, acquainted me with the original version and more importantly with the original text and videoclip. There unbeknownst from me was a storyline to be discovered which was in heart the same as my story - here it was a veteran on life support that wanted to die and be free from all the tubes. The boy in my story wanted to be free from his wheelchair and fly, with death as the only option to give him that. I was amazed that the heart of the stories were the same when the two had never met.
The first real shimmer of light into the project came when about a month ago I was visiting a modern art exposition from Leo's old drawing teacher. It triggered my wish of exploring motion in a confined space, a loop, or perhaps motion without a to b stories but motion in animation that convey feelings, thoughts, glimpses, moods, but not really the restrictive storylines that always cause me to get in trouble with myself, teachers, audiences as they have to follow rules and be logic while the things I want to convey mostly are moods, symbols and feelings, though they usually have a storyline to produce said feelings and moods. It was something I had tried for the first time with Brisk and the story of Orpheus at group project on school. But I didn't really understand what I was searching, eventhough the first inspiration also had come there from modern paintings like those from Klimt and Rothko. Eitherway... I was struck again by how much I want to make 'moving paintings' in animation, in endless loops, flowing, moving in intricate detail and colors. I went home inspired and wishing that I could transform Junglebook into that, as that truly was what I had always intended with it before I came entangled in setting out storylines and plots for the viewers and critics.
But then my animation job Sammy kicked in and I had to forget about it completely. I am very grateful and proud of this job and it will provide me with a stable income for a year and a half. I love it and it's just my type of hand drawn animation, too. And I'm glad it's finally taking off now. At this moment I'm animating on sequence 5, shot 45 to 52 (we started somewhere near the end). It's gonna be a lot of work still, but I'm confident that by the end of this project I have gained a lot of experience in animating. It's really challenging. I had to animate people walking down from a stair (try to find a good youtube example from that! -I did by the way-) and a person locking a door and casually but with purpose dropping the key chain into his pocket. There will probably be a lot more where that came from. But eitherway. A lot of things were starting up and changing. The wife of my scriptwriter for Itshou, my funded graphic novel, died and he contacted a second scriptwriter to help on the team and take away some of the burden. The second writer is also very great and really has a feeling for the development for the characters providing more the deeper insight and strenght in them, so I know this will be a great team! So I again forgot a little about that unfinished business called the junglebook project.
Then a couple of weeks ago I came across the band Mice Parade purely by chance as an inspiring soundtrack to an ancient video game I came across. The music (Circle 1) was an endless ambient loop and I liked it, but it was when I was sitting in the train listening to it endlessly seeing trees rush past me to it, that I realized this is it! This is the new impulse I need for Forests of Tomorrow... my junglebook project. Strip away the straightforward a to b story and make a kinetic movie only consisting of images, loops and bits and pieces that the viewer might puzzle into the message I want to give.
And then it went to sleep again, but that song, every time it came across my playlist, I felt it burn in my ears.
And then it was yesterday, late in the afternoon. I was listening to my epic trailer music list because I had found out that working out your arms to battle the ever present foe of all computer based artists alike, RSI, feels a lot more epic than the actually boring excercises are. I went working on Sammy with that list still on, and it being such a huge collection means that I have actually listened only a small part of it, mostly the same parts I like, but once in a while I go on listening to new songs. And to my shock, I came across a different version of the original inspiration track to Forest of the Tomorrow, that originally being the Serenata track from Immediate music. It was very epic, moving and pulling you along with it in a sense that has my Mowgli character run around the jungle and city with vigor almost dancing through the air like Russian free running boys scaling abandoned buildings. The music inspired the run-like motion throughout the whole film and the pacing with the tranquil forest introduction, dreamy which is roughly interrupted then by hard music and the meeting of construction workers taking the forest down to make way for a city. Mowgli does not understand the technology but because of the roaring noises can only see it as being some sort of gigantic tiger that he must battle to defend his forest. He ends up in the city, not understanding it's geometric shapes where he only knows organic shapes and tries to see jungle elements in it, but keeps getting foiled by reality. Defeated he rushes of in a hasted search to return to his forest, but finds that the only nature still present is preserved in a museum. There beaten and destroyed and weary he lies himself to rest as the next item on display, next to the actual stuffed tiger which he thought to have been chasing. The whole orchestra piece set the pacing, the motion and it was grand. But as tends to happen at school and with many voices, everything needs to become literal. You need to speak out the vague and emotion-based visuals and moods into actual storypoints which, ultimately destroys the very fabric of what I had wanted to create.
So, when I heard this alternate version of the original piece, it was longer and to my joy had vocals. Vocals which caught that utmost sadness of feelings with people caught in a dream of their past, living in illusions by choice as the reality is too harsh and uncopable. It fitted, even though they had been seperate all this time like with Beyond the Window before. This is the central theme that runs through many of my works. In a way it en voices a feeling that has always been with me, knowing that as a child bound to be growing up, I clad myself in those illusions as I did not want to say goodbye to them. In a way it placates the need to live in fantasies and illusions to deal with the unmagical, unromanticed real life that differs so much from the fairy tales where brought up with, in a way it is an anger that we get to be brought with 'lies' to learn to dream and fly and think everything is possible, only to be stripped off your beliefs later by saying, oh, yeah, about that santa clause... the easter bunny... they're not real. Disney versions of fairy tales aren't actually what really happened, and no, you're prince isn't going to come to that school dance prom to sweep you away, especially not when you're twelve. We are thought as children we can believe in anything, but when we grow we are as quickly untaught. Is it better to never have been taught to believe in miracles then? Or do grown ups simply forget to believe in them and want to beat it out of their happy children as quickly as possible, thinking, well, damnit, you need to wake up and see the real world I'm working hard in to earn a living, no fairytale princesses for you anymore, mommy has a headache. As a manner of speaking of course. I never encountered that during my growing up (except the part of santa clause and such, which seriously made me afraid that Jesus Christ then wouldn't exist also and god knows what more) which gave me a numerous other amount of troubles fitting in while I remained to believe in just about anything until I went to highschool and the bullying really began.
I had a point in this ramble.
I might have lost it along the way. But I wanted to say, I think I refound that message I want to spread out and tell to the world. It can come in many shapes or even as it's counterpart. It can be as a mirror or a two-edged sword, which it more usually is. It is okay to dream and to believe in miracles. Stay away from literalist thinking, live the dream, dance, sing. But the other side is being an outcast, not fitting into the rest of the world anymore which is slave to left brained thinking as if they never leave school, while the real school of life is something entirely different all together. To leftbrainers, the mowgli story is sad and delusional, but to rightbrainers, the story is wonderful, provocative, and deeply touching. And both are true. The bittersweet taste of it together, making it all worthwhile.
So I'm back at the instrumental and vocal version of the original inspiration track. It's pulling me along as hard as ever to believe in this project. It's funny how going through development for a film you tend to move away further and further, and then start back at the beginning but wiser for the journey. Some people will probably call me crazy for turning back to the original views (albeit altered a bit), throwing away, months and months of advice, reworked storyboards and painfully devised plot twists. The point is, it never was meant as a story, but ironically as my teacher had stamped it like that early on in the progress, as a kinetic film (that actually shows how good teachers can secretly be sometimes, they can be years ahead of you!). It might have a story and storyelements in it, but it's not a conventional story. It's not an a to b story, for the very least it's not told like that. It flies and whirls like a storm and bits and pieces will hit you and you will make something of it, but it's not a story in the kind of way that you can simply write down in words but need to sing, need to draw and present in moving images and music, only that can do it justice. In a way, I have to make the entire movie before I can actually tell what it is. And perhaps even then I cannot explicitly tell the story points or what it is (even aside from the fact that I'm horrible at summarizing stories or getting through to the actual core). It has to be experienced. Maybe some then will call it a bad film, or a bad story, or me a bad storyteller. But it's not a film and it's not a story to begin with. It's a feeling caught in time, an experience. The look of a butterfly wing in flight. And that's all it is. And that's the kind of movies I really want to make. Of course I sometimes want to do something like the thing that Beyond the Window became. To do storydriven animations. I've got already an idea lined up for the next one. But Junglebook was never meant to be a mainstream film. It was, like Seasons, to be artistic, to be an author's film, not the next Beyond the Window (where many of my youtube fans are probably hoping for). In my graduation project I wanted it to be both I guess and it ended up being neither. But I do not want to make a Beyond the Window now. The things that really, utterly move me and thrive me to create are much different and as of yet, still caught in those butterfly wings in my head. I hope I can catch them and make a print on paper of them before letting them fly free again.