FMP: Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou (1929) screen shot

Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí was a really helpful film to watch. The experience allowed me to form a clearer idea of the sort of animation I want to produce, in regards to how it is received by the view. Not only do I want it to be an experience that the viewer embarks on, but also a cause of disturbance and discomfort... something that someone would want to escape from. This short film was constructed through a combination of the artists dreams manifest content and that of random sense ideas that seemed to fit well between them both. I now I'm pondering on how I am going to build up my story board. Will it be a sort of montage of my manifest content, will it be a similar process to the making of Un Chien Andalou or could I take a completely different direction?

FMP: Inspiring Quote

"...the simplest surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly..." - Andre Breton

FMP: Dream Logging Research

Series of screen shots taken from the short film Destino (2003) by Salvador Dalí (surrealist) and Walt Disney (animator). 

Merz by Kurt Schwitters (dadaist) 

Photo's are not authors own

I have looked into some of the artists that participated in the Surreal and Dada art movements. This stage of my research has opened a lot of doors into how I can represent the themes I am working with, which are dream state, lucidity and escapism. Dalí has worked a lot with the manifest content of his dreams, along side other surrealists like Vladimir Kush and Georgio De Chirico. Destino, which is fundamentally a montage of Dalí's previous paintings, creates a strong example of how a dream may play out in ones mind, therefore I took substantial amounts of inspiration from it. Moving on from this research I won't to produce a series of observational/life drawings that I will then manipulate in a slightly surrealist/dadaist manner. Dadaism was quite a hard art movement to grasp, but I suppose that is the whole point. This kind of, nonsensical, "do whatever you like" approach that seems to be the foundations of the movement correlates very well with the lucid state of dreaming, where the dreamer is conscious of the fact that they are still asleep and, through mental discipline, can proceed to change their dream environment and situation.  

FMP: Dream Logging Project Proposal

Screen shot of my project proposal power point

Photo is authors own 

After mind mapping the ideas that I currently have surrounding the idea of Dream Logging and deciding what research is necessary for the development of this concept, I composed a power point presentation, in order to pitch my idea to a group of my peers and my tutors. Through doing this I was able to grasp the direction I was heading in with more clarity and allowed others to give me fed back that will enrich my research process and in turn, my ideas to come. For the next stage of my FMP I will use this project proposal to guide my research into the Surrealist and Dada art movements, as well as films/animations that have explored a similar concept to mine, most obviously the Walt Disney animation  Alice in Wonderland (1951).