Oooo!

Thought I ought to post an overview of the project as it stands now:


The laundry room is creepy. Either vacant and fluorescent or dingy and hidden, the laundry room is an indubitably ominous space. I plan to capitalize on this creepiness in Lintscape by creating a tactile and emmersive world. Two films come to mind that will inform Lintscape’s visual style and mood, the first being the BBC series Planet Earth. The precision of the macro cinematography and attention to minutiae, particularly when filming insects appeals to Limtscape’s visual style: the viewer will “shrink” into a foreign microcosm. Secondly, David Lynch’s Eraserhead is a vital text for creating mood. I am impressed by the way that the film juggles fear and absurd humor without becoming campy. Also the gritty, grainy quality speaks deeply to the aesthetic of Lintscape.
The story begins in a normal neighborhood, in a normal laundry room, with a normal woman doing her laundry. The era is present day. We follow her deft actions at a leisurely pace, noting the particles and debris that are present in the atmosphere. Under the camera, we are not sure if the movement of dust, hair and soap suds are involuntary or not, benign or malicious. We become aware very suddenly that something IS in fact alive when a glob/creature of lint creeps out of the dryer’s lint trap. The hapless housewife will not see this until it is too late and has been strangled by the lint. A time lapse of her body shows spores of lint, growing from her host flesh. We then revisit the neighborhood shot, revealing that the attack was not isolated. The entire neighborhood has been overtaken by spores.
I will use 2D puppet, stop-motion in the drably-colored laundry room. For the final camera move, I will transition into a color-saturated 3D world with lint-polyp armatures. Shooting digitally, I can compile layers of animation, heightening the disjointed proportion and depth within the world. The focus on particle movement is crucial. Floating dust, waving hair and bubbling soap-suds, in addition to the mettlesome lint, will be filmed at a very close angle. One of the important aesthetic themes will be the play between what is intentional and what is not. Tension will build up as the audience wonders if the particles are moving in a natural system or if there is perhaps some conscious force. Achieving this type of minute and ambiguous movement will be very challenging, and I am seeking funding to engage mentors Janusz Sikora and Marce Valcarce in the process of lighting, shooting and compositing.
The theme of intentionality will carry over into sound design. I have composed music for my films before and look forward to working hands on with my composer and sound designer to create the perfect aural mood. In the laundry room, I wish to navigate the fine line between random noise and structured music, again creating tension through ambiguity. The environmental sounds will at times swell into an organized musical theme of sorts and then dissemble. In the colorful 3D lint world, I would like to have a pop song, reminiscent of “In Heaven” from Eraserhead. The scene is rather brash and frightening (lint-polyps have taken over the world!) and an asynchronous sound track heightens the horror of the situation by juxtaposing the visual tragedy with aural nonchalance.
I think there are tones of environmental concern, moments of childlike whimsy, and perhaps most important, though lackadaisically paced, the film is brief. At three minutes, there will be no time for slack. The film will be taut and entertaining, despite its experimental undertones.