Of Crows and Gender
It has been 1,5 weeks after our client's pitches to us and exactly two days after my application interview for the DAAD. And while the second one is widely believed to be more nerve-wrecking, I ended up being more concerned about my ideas and pitches for our clients.
For with the first client, I still have major concerns on how to implement his ideas for the pop promo. I decided upon leaving his story idea intact and to instead concentrate on how to tackle the issues at hand.
Since he seemed adamant about the idea of him and his wish of seeing the Hotel Chelsea of the old days being represented by a flying crow that crosses the Atlantic, arriving in New York and finding the hotel in which it roams before it finally takes wing and returns to him. It seemed to me that he was very attached to the idea so I saw no benefit in changing it or coming up with a different story altogether.
So in order to break the task down into manageable steps for myself and my planning, I decided that, in terms of New York, Hotel Chelsea and the crow, I would opt for free footage of New York, either copyrighted footage of Hotel Chelsea or filming at a location with similar architecture, and in looking into the possibility of a trained crow.
I found a British organisation called A-Z Animals that was offering a wide range of trained animals for film, theatre, and other media outlets, on top of a public liability insurance of over five million pounds, risk assessments and an attending veterinary surgeon. And although I really liked the idea and the way the organisation presented itself, I immediately realised that this is going to be a major expense on part of the client.
Since our client already seemed reluctant in paying any extra expenses, I realised that acquiring footage of a crow and New York with or without hiring a trained crow (plus animal trainer, of course!) and with or without flying over to New York, will be majorly difficult: In case he is not up for paying for a trained crow, it will be up to either ask for permission about copyrighted material or to access and use free footage available. Which will, in turn, be extremely difficult to find in a combination so that both sets of footage will look good when keyed together.
Also, the client's wish of incorporating images of famous musicians, artists, and writers that lived at Hotel Chelsea will either be a costly endeavour due to copyright or at least extremely difficult to mock up, for it requires the organisation of a whole set of actors, costumes, and makeup that will be extremely ambitious in the amount of time we have been given. Apart from the fact that the client did not like the idea of mocking the stars up when it was proposed to him during our first meeting.
So much for that.
With our second client, I feared that I would come up with ideas that turn out to be either insensitive or missing the mark entirely. The biggest struggle for me is the fact that I do not manage to put myself into the place of a transgender person. While I consider myself to be empathetic and to understand others well emotionally, feeling trapped within one's own body, wanting to change sex, or not being able to identify as either male or female is a situation I cannot fathom.
So I decided that I needed to do some research on my part in order to get a better grasp of what I was to talk about. Which is why I sat down and watched ’The Danish Girl’. I must admit that I was struggling to finish the film. Not because of the topic itself, but because of the depiction of the historical figure Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe. In real life, Einar/Lili was one of the first openly transgender people who outed themselves and one of the very first pioneers in receiving a sex change surgery in the early 1930’s in Denmark and Germany. And while I found it wildly interesting from a historical point of view (Where have these kinds of stories been during my history education in Germany?), I was appalled by the depiction.
Although the film was beautifully shot from a cinematic point of view, the story itself had major issues in psychological and personal regards: Einar/Lili, for the longest time, was not merely depicted as someone who is struggling with their gender identity and sex, but the cinematic depiction of the inner struggle repeatedly suggested that Einar/Lili was schizophrenic or, at best, delusional. The gradual reveal of Einar’s struggle with Lili failed to portray itself in a sense that was not stigmatising him or his struggle as the mere byproduct of a psychological disease. It became so bad at times that I had to stop watching the film in order to recollect myself before watching further.
This film has both been a blessing and a curse.
After I watched it, I was more afraid than ever to be inadvertently insensitive to the plight of the transgender people I was producing this film for. If major and more advanced players in the industry are incapable of depicting such a story in a graceful way, how am I supposed to navigate said waters without committing the same fallacies?
But then I thought: If I am this appalled by the botched depiction of character development in The Danish Girl, then I should be able to discern fallacies in my story early on. After all, I was starting to develop a sense of what it could be like to be trapped in one’s own body. What struggles it might entail. How it can gnaw away at your self-esteem if you have to portray someone that you don’t feel you are.
I did some soul-searching and up until now, I was able to come up with two different ideas, one of which I was able develop and expand quickly. It is emotionally based on the video she showed us when we first met. Since it allowed me to further access the issue emotionally and get a better understanding of it on a deeper level, I decided to stick to it and follow my gut feeling.
So the idea is to juxtapose two characters: Chris and Christina. Chris is a man in his mid-thirties, successful, content and confidence. Whatever he touches turns to gold and he is wildly respected. We follow him through a typical day, a person beaming with energy and enthusiasm. When he flops into bed a late Friday night, this blissful dream is literally coming to an end. For we see Christina being awakened by the shrill of her alarm clock and we realise from her surroundings: She has just been dreaming of being Chris all along.
This idea, of course, still needs development, since I am not yet quite sure, how many scenes I want to use and how I can depict his joyous nature throughout the clip. What I am sure about, though, is that it will have a rather montage-like style, vibrant colours, and a lot of camera movements.
The bonus with this idea here is that I can easily imagine this being done at the level we currently are and have. In my mind, as always, the idea played out nicely and looked good, but I regard it also manageable for the time and abilities we have at hand. And since I want to become a cinematographer, I also regard this as my personal challenge in advancing from static shots to moving shots and moving out of the comfort zone regarding the use of equipment.
My ambition is burning, so I better get going!
References:
A - Z Animals (n.d.) Animals for Hire, Hire Animals for Film, TV, Photography [online] http://www.a-zanimals.co.uk/home [Accessed on 25 January 2018]
Hays, A.L. (n.d.) Some kind of dreamer [online] Image taken from: https://www.pinterest.de/pin/576812664744049314/ [Accessed on 25 January 2018]
Hooper, T. (2015) The Danish Girl [DVD] UK et al.: Working Title Films [online] Image taken from: http://bit.ly/2HAU6PV [Accessed on 25 January 2018]
Michelin, M (n.d.) Ravenmaster [online] Image taken from: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgcVsy_XIAAMHcX.jpg [Accessed on 25 January 2018]