Absolutely Huge Revelations!

I have been using a app on my Ipad called Nomad. This is a 3D sculpting app where you can create ANYTHING. when I say that I mean it.

As of 25th October 2023 I realised you can also render your creations.

As in, make it look almost life like.

This morning I started playing around with new poses to put the 'Ghost' in and I started to get frustrated with it. I started just using different controls and presets and discovered the render button.

This had led me to a whole new thing without having to learn Blender. (blender looks intimidating)

After playing around for a while I created this.

The first one is abit rubbish but its a process of trying and experimenting with technology I have no experience in.

After another couple hours of finding files online and playing around with lighting and environment I created these renders.

Slowly getting better.

Ghosts in Motion

Here are some quick sketches I made roughly 45 mins - 1 hour each.

I used Eadweard Muybridge's photographic documentation as a reference for each of the poses seen below, well I say that but a couple is a lose sketch from the film 'A Ghost Story'

Thursday 8th June 2023

On Thursday 8th June 2023 a film changed me. I cannot describe the way it changed me, but it was a film I thought about for weeks after. It's also a film that frustrated me, due to the content of the film is incredibly close to everything I have been creating over the past year. The subjectivity, cinematography, storyline, colour scheme, well everything about this film completely blew my mind.

This film I 100% have never heard of or seen before the 8th of June 2023. You have my word on that. A Echlin Promise.

The film

A Ghost Story 2017 by David Lowry. A24 productions.

I am going to describe this film because 4 months later I am still thinking about it daily.

The film A Ghost Story is not exactly what you'd think it to be, you would probably think its a film about a translucent ghost haunting a family and killing them off one by one. If anything its the complete opposite.

A Ghost Story 2017 follows a couple we only know as C and M.

C played by Casey Affleck (Ben Affleck's Brother) and M played by Rooney Mara, there's very little words spoken in this film apart from the mid film monologue giving the viewer context behind the film.

In my personal opinion the film revolves completely by a note in the wall placed in there by M.

In the opening scenes of the film, M tells her musician husband, C that when she was younger she would move around from house to house, before she'd leave each location she would hide little notes in the houses, the viewer never knows what was written on these notes but she does specify that she would never return to these places. There is a set up here where we observe that C is reluctant to leave the house he has grown attatched to.

During this sequence a loud noise is heard from the other room, but not being able to pin point what it was.

In the next scene we are slowly shown a view of a house, which has smoke rising past it, we then pan across to see a car accident, with C behind the wheel clearly deceased.

The next shot is M stood over C who is covered by a white sheet. We wait a full minute before any motion is seen, the person under the sheet sits up with the sheet still covering them. The view then transitions to C wandering through the corridors, now as a ghost, not being seen by anyone else.

we see C wandering down the corridor and at the end a white door of light opens up in front of C. C ignores the door and we see the door close. As people believe, ghosts are spirits who linger around with unfinished business.

We then watch C (who is still under the sheet and does remain like this throughout the film)

wandering through fields on his way back to the house he is still reluctant to leave.

As C arrives home he sees their landlord drop off A pie, this pie is important to the film. in the house across the street we see another sheet ghost, C and this other ghost converse to each other, but as the viewer we see this through text on the screen, the other ghost is unsure of who they're waiting for.

In this scene we spend several minutes watching M (Rooney Mara) eating this pie until she runs to the bathroom to be sick, while C is unable to interact but just observe.

This scene shows the effect grief has on people, the shock they go through and the irrational decisions and actions they make while grieving. The next few scenes show C stood in their living room, watching M trying to move on. We observe her going out of one door through another then emerging through a different door, this is showing the viewer the passage of time in the film, all while C stands watching.

The way M and C are shown after his death is interesting. The scenes are filmed at different speeds. M being filmed at a normal pace and C being filmed in a much slower pace, then overlayed, showing the disjointed point in time that C experiences.

We discover M starts dating again which causes some distress for C, this is shown by C making some disturbances within the house.

This is where we are introduced to a song C shown M when they first met. The song, 'I Get Overwhelmed' by The Dark Rooms becomes the theme to the film. Most of the soundtrack to this film features small aspects to each track.

We see that M is moving out, as she is painting one of the door frames she writes something on a little note and slots it into a open crack, then paints over it.

C starts to pick at the painted part of the doorway, this is when we see that a Spanish family has moved into his house. We see this family move in, eat, sleep and celebrate Christmas, all this happening around C as he slowly moved through the house.

The children then begin to sense the presence of C and witness him standing in their bedroom doorway. While the family is having dinner C becomes enraged and raises a glass of milk from the table.

Then we see a point of view from the family where the glass is just floating in the air and smashes to the ground. C then opens the cupboards and start throwing all their plates at the walls while the family huddles in the corner clearly distressed at what's happening to them.

C continues to scratch at where M put the note, where we see the next occupants of the house having a party.

This is where we hear the monologue, explaining how creativeness is pointless, its enough to give anyone an existential crisis.

here is the monologue below.

https://youtu.be/Ed78mk20IC4?si=AVYTdKnWFROK-bCv

We then see the house has been abandoned and become derelict. C continues to pick at the gap but is then interrupted by a bulldozer which comes crashing through the window. demolishing C house and the house of the unknown ghost. On the screen we then see the text 'I don't think they're coming' and the sheet drops to the floor.

Where C stands we can see the landscape transform to a building site, then to a skyscraper. Throughout this scene we see C wandering through the building, passing office workers making his way to the roof.

This is where we see that where C once resided has now become a futuristic cityscape, C then drops off the side of the building, plummeting to the ground.

C is then stood in a field, watching as a man is hammering fence posts into the ground, we see here that C has been transported back to the 1800s. He watches as settlers gather around a fire and talk. We then see a little girl write a note and hide it under a rock, as C is staring at the rock we hear Native Americans chanting, as the smoke settles C then see the corpse of the settlers, we then witness the decay of them.

As C is sat in the field watching the corpses be overgrown, we then see that C is back in his house. The front door opens and we see a real-estate agent giving C and M a tour of the house before they purchased it. Its showing us that C has been haunting himself.

As C and M are in bed there is a loud noise, the same noise from the start of the film. The mysterious sound we heard at the start of the film was C slamming down on the piano which startled the couple.

the film then repeats the same timeline as we seen at the start, but we then notice another fresh sheet ghost appear over C's shoulder, this too is also C.

The new C is stood watching out the window, showing this is at the point where M has just moved out of, meanwhile C we have been observing throughout the film goes over to the doorframe where M hid the note.

This time C manages to pick it out, he stands up and reads it. The sheet then drops to the ground as who was underneath it vanishes.

To me this film is now my new influence, the aspect ratio which it is filmed in, the sound track, the meaning and of course the typical sheet ghost.

As you can see in my previous blog posts the figure of a ghost has become more and more prominent as I continued working through the end of last year.

The link between the concept of Hauntology and the film A Ghost Story cannot be any clearer.

The typical sheet ghost which I have referenced in previous works is that they signify the past, the past that still lingers with us today.

When we walk through a field, thousands of other people have walked through that same field, leaving their imprint on it, it could be a foot print or discarded rubbish but we have still left that imprint. No matter how long it will last, its what we leave behind as a civilisation. The repetition of daily routine and places we visit, we become attached to, but not to what it is now but what it once was and what it will become.

I constantly think about this when I walk my dog through the same fields. Who walked through here? Did they expect this path to change to what it has become now? How long will it be before the land has been purchased and built on? How long before those houses turn back into rubble?

Its repetition, going through the same cycle. Some aspects of previous existence will stay prominent but maybe someone will be asking the same questions when they walk through the same fields I do.

'A Ghost Story' to me explors hauntological themes, diving into the ways in which the past haunts the present, and how memories and emotions linger even after physical presence has faded away.

This is a diorama I created in response to this film.