Context: This image series, (as separate blog posts) are from my in-progress scifi short film Outskirts, a story set on the fringes of a lone starport in a desolate wasteland occupied by grifters, nomads and a scrap collector who finds a decaying and mute girl android. It is intended that she be sold for parts, and as she is forced to walk the long journey to the smelting station, a relationship between the pair develops.
These stills are frame grabs of the visual effects composites I’ve been working on. The original photographic plates were filmed on a beach sand dune during a holiday so many beachgoers and birds have had to to be digitally removed. I filmed it in this manner with the hope that the holiday would provide more large cruise boats celebrating out in the ocean. By employing techniques to digitally convert boats and other real-life objects into port freighters and outskirt architecture, the original lighting of the distant and hazy objects could be retained. When done right, this technique can create a realism and tactile quality moreso than completely computer generated objects and it allows for a grittier visual pallette complete with light blooms and dirt reminiscent of 1980’s miniature and process photography..
I’m not sure if I should keep investing time into this short because on the surface it seems in premise very similar to Joseph Kosinski’s new film Oblivion of which I was unaware when I shot Outskirts. I do believe though, that my film may have a rather different look, tone, story thrust and will not feature an oddly timed appearance by Morgan Freeman. So it may still be worth pursuing. If I decide to scrap it, I will retain these aesthetic techniques and employ them towards another original premise. What do the Tumblr-ers think? Worth it?
scraps
metals or new plastics not old, tungsten, iron, aluminum only
not this not that they say
and I listen
I find the scraps in the outskirts far from port and I find alot of other things too
I look at those things at night with my light and I understand many things about them
31 days round trip is good
leave to get some scraps come back
I walk slow and make sure to look for the scraps
don’t get bored and look at the stars and the mountains
and miss the scraps by the feet
look at every rock decide if it’s a rock or a scrap
some years one scrap is worth more
some years the scrap is worth nothing and I don’t carry that scrap
some years you pass by worth-nothing scraps and you leave it
then it is the most important scrap now
I knew I should of pick up that junk scrap they say angry
but I always remember where all of the scraps are from before and
memorize the scraps
I go back and get the scrap
someday there will be no more scraps they say
someday the scraps will run out and we will die, there is only so much scraps they say
there will always be more scraps i say because they are clumsy
and don’t care about the scraps
I find them because
I care about the scraps
31 days round trip is good
off port the cities are built all out of scraps
found a girl made out of scraps
is she worth more as scraps or as a girl
I brought her to smelt and they don’t want her
scraps too fused all together they say
she is too heavy to carry but she can walk
help look for scraps on ground I told her
she doesn’t understand
she leaks and I will sell the fluid scrap too
I know where they will buy her scraps
I don’t know what to feed her
she walks slower every day
the man had looked over and she saw this
the train lurched, forms smeared
the transistor had its on off
chips calculating pure and fast
in two bits with error coding
perfect
for the perfect
the brain had it’s mush
each neuron with pooling neurotransmitters tangled lightning storms dendrites
receptors soaking in impulse baths
gooey slow accumulating mush
a million bits of depth and error prone
perfect
for the imperfect
the reigning processor of all things context dependant
distilling the infinite inputs into one single hunch of mush
and she knew he was no good this man
so she did something about it
and soon his inferior mush had no tangled lighting storm
his was dark