Moscow Metro
Making my way around Moscow to meetings and checking out various possibilities, cameras etc, for the films. The last few days have been a question of working out a tone and style for the film adaptation of The Fairground Booth. The accompanying documentaries in the project “Vakhtangov and the Russian Theatre” and “Carnival in Russian Theatre” are relatively straight forward with the stress on relatively. However a film adaptation of Blok’s play is distinctly problematic. Firstly, there are many stereotypical takes on the main characters -Pierrot, Columbine and Harlequin which I want to avoid. I aim to find a particular tone and style for the production and this will effect the overall design for the play, costumes set and general look. This will take time so the best thing is to continue with the shooting script and background research to all the three films. This will provide the necessary depth once some of the other questions begin to get solved. Its a similar situation I faced in the film “Alexander Rodchenko and the Russian Avant-garde”. It was the first film I made in Moscow and required scenes showing Rodchenko at work at his desk and other scenes of Rodchenko. For an extended account about the making of this film click here.
In this film I needed to solve two basic problems. The style in which I would shoot and casting the role of Rodchenko. It took a long time and followed a specific process of finding the right person for the role. A similar process is emerging once again whereby there are a lot of questions and and you have to wait for some of the answers.
Work has been going ahead for the shooting script of the Fairground Booth and the other two documentary films associated with the project. Here in Moscow its been an interesting few days creatively. After attending an exhibition of Japanese micropop art in Moscow it made me look at a film project on which I was engaged before the completion of “Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre” I set the project aside despite the first part of the two film project being completed and much of the 2nd film also in an advanced state of post production. The two films were about Japanese art and culture and somehow they didn’t feel complete so I decided to put them on one side. As it turns out this incompleteness may turn out to be a positive aspect and to the advantage of the project as a whole. The two films were the outcome of two 3 month journeys to Japan especially for filming at locations all over Japan. The project is in a process of re evaluation and to some extent reinterpretation and redefining. More later on this subject as I work out which is the best media for introducing this project. For more details about this project click here.
