The Narrative Behind the Set-Design

I've scattered around vague descriptions of the narrative within previous blog entries, but I thought it'd be best to create a more summative post.

Until now, I had only designed the narrative for the model's scene alone, but with multiple viewings of 'Bladerunner' [1982]/'Bladerunner 2049' [2017] and research into the games 'Bioshock' [2007] & 'Wolfenstein II' [2017], I've come to develop a more complete picture of which my model belongs to.

The title of the film my models exists within : NULL

It's a fictious commentary on mankind's own abhorent history of unethical human experimentation, dressed in an alternate reality. This world presents a regime to create the ultimate human form, using thousands of inferior beings as test subjects. However, the failings of designated scientists leads to countless disfigurements, mutations and subsequent deaths by execution. With blood on their hands and no real progress, the entire mission seems futile. The ruling order begin to lose control and reason for what they originally set out to achieve, meanwhile the subjects grow restless. Through the extreme neglect and dehumanisation of these beings, a vast rebellion is born. In their attempts to create the ultimate human, they have in fact built an entire army against themselves.

To understand more of David Lynch's work [my chosen director for this film] and to develop these ideas, I recently read The Philosophy of David Lynch [2011, Devlin & Biderman]. The text underpins the unorthodox narrative style of Lynch while investigating all elements political, social and ethical. With Lynch as director, my film would cease to be a typical hollywood, apocolypse but something much darker and slow-paced. The discussion of Lynch's 1986 film Blue Velvet within this book felt particularly relevant to the themes of my own narrative. An inhumane disregard to other human beings in my plot depicts this "world of inexpilcable evil, a place where the discovery of severed human body parts merely confirms a brutal and violent reality of irresistible impulses" [p.48]. The numerous acts of explotation are committed with complete emotional dettachment from the subjects; carried out in the voice of duty yet clearly animalistic to the onlooker. Speaking more generally, its Lynch's nightmarish portrayal of our own reality that I want to amplify. "NULL" will narrate the issues of our world that are quitely swept under the carpet.

Above: Text referred to & an original poster of a Lynchian film discussed by Devlin & Biderman.

With the film's narrative and atmosphere set, the scene that my own model depicts occurs in the first half of the film; before the rebellion. This particular room exhibits the result of a failed and abandonned experiment. The subject was taken by force and imprisoned in the latter half of the room, behind the looking glass. Wired up to have chemicals pumped into him constantly, he soon grew to display an anatomy of gross disproportion - an extraordinarily large stomach encompossed by thin, malnourished limbs. After years of failed tests, the room was abanndonned to focus their attention on other, more successful subjects. Eventually, the man passed away. His body was disposed of and the room was to be prepared for the next experiment.

Much like Lynch's The Elephant Man [1980], both the treatment of the man and his phsyical attributes can be compared to the likes of John Merrick: "A mere object of scientific curiosity" [p.208]. Through progressive deformations of his exterior appearance, he soon becomes less-than the men on the other side of the glass. Merrick and the subject are both perceived "as an objective body, as an object of voyeurism, abuse, and mockery" [p.140]. They too, die in a similar fashion. Upon a hard floor, their deformed bodies collapse within and they pass in their sleep. Lynch presents alienation with death as its only freedom.

What we are shown in the miniature model is the aftermath. You can still see the dark patches in the corner of the room where the subject had sat all of those years. Documents and papers are still pinned up in the observation area and chemicals drip ever so slightly from the disconnected pipework. It is clear that this is a room of confinment, imprisonment and involuntary testing. We are presented with a place of recent departure and a history of inhumane behaviour.

The end product of this unit is the creation of a short film in groups of 3/4 - this means considering linking my narrative to the others and also creating a detailed storyboard. Closer to the time, I'll write up a post on any alterations I've made to my narrative and how I am to turn it into a film.