Chopsticks [Episode One]

Chopsticks [Episode One]

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It started a bit randomly in Economics class. I don’t fully remember how the conversation started, but three of us decided that we were going to make an short art film, because… why not.

The story was simple, a suppressed and abused woman is pushed beyond her breaking point. She defiantly reclaims her heritage and independence by killing her abusive husband with a pair of chopsticks.

We didn’t have a proper script, but we did write out a two page treatment that walked through the concepts of the story we were trying to tell. Though reading through it now, I’m a little bummed at some of the details that we didn’t get to film, like “The Wife” character was meant to be wearing a blonde wig, representing another layer of the suppression of her identity. Unfortunately, since we were in high school nobody had any money to buy a wig.

Page one of our treatment
Page 2 of the treatment

We filmed the short over two afternoons in my parents kitchen using two Hi-8 cameras. After filming was done, I jerry rigged two VCRs together to make a rudimentary editing bay, and even spliced two cables together so that I could route my stereo into one of them to create the soundtrack. It’s funny to think that today literally all of this could be done on the phone that’s in my pocket.

Sure, some of the cuts could be tightened up, or we could have done with some cutaways or even a bit of lighting design, but all in all, I still think that we created something that had some merit. Of course its no where near perfect, but considering none of us had studied film, I would say its “not terrible… ”

Let me know what you think… oh and I totally have some more thoughts on the subject… stay tuned…

Portishead Dummy Cover Image
Desert Island Stitch: Dummy

Desert Island Stitch: Dummy

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I can’t tell you where I was the first time I heard Portishead’s “Sour Times,” maybe because I was immediately swept up in that guitar strum and slow sinister bass line. I was transported into a smoke filled noir-neverland where every dark corner held a secret. The album “Dummy” is a piece of art and mood that exists in a certain era but is simultaneously timeless.

Portishead "Dummy" Cross Stitch
Setting the appropriate mood

Initially my plan was for this to be the sixth in the series, but I just couldn’t get my head around it. The cover image is slightly pixelated still taken from the video where Beth Gibbons has been tied to a chair and is being interrogated. Its dark, and its small. So I back-burned it thinking it ultimately probably wouldn’t work anyway.

As I was finishing up the Santigold piece, my thoughts kept turning back toward “Dummy.” This album is so much to me, that I just had to make it work. I pulled out the CD again, and gave it stronger consideration. Since the image wasn’t super crisp, I took that as license to be a bit more impressionist with the approach. My design called for 30 different thread colors, oddly, only 3 of which I already had in my kit. Variations in color may be slight, but the result is like a low resolution jpg, familiar, but still a bit off.

Portishead "Dummy" Side x Side Comparison
Portishead “Dummy” Side x Side Comparison

I did leave the band name off. It was a similar dilemma I had with The Cure’s “Three Imaginary Boys” where the text was so small, and a few random stitch blobs would not have actually added anything to the overall piece.

Let me know what you think in the comments below, and in the meantime, here is a little behind the scenes action of the production process… to the tune of “Sour Times.”