Ill-Studio Mirrored
The short sees a man walk through the city of Berlin while carrying a large, rectangular mirror. The identity of the man is never revealed, only what he sees is reflected back at us. The art direction and design studio felt the German city was the best backdrop for the shoot. “Berlin has had many different lives in terms of architecture. These interesting, patchwork forms and textures is exactly what we were after,” says Thomas. “We love the contrast between the neoclassicism of historical buildings to the brutalism of the DDR era, and the postmodernism of the 80s to the natural landscape that surround the buildings.”
Ill-Studio has used mirrors as a “tangible layer of surrealism” in its projects before. “It’s a simple visual trick used by many artists we love such as Stan Vanderbeek, Bruce McLean, Joan Jonas and Carlo Mollino among others.” Playing with angles, vistas and perspectives, we’re given an alternative view of not only Berlin but how we view cities and their construction as a whole. “We love to superimpose different layers of texture, colour, materials and form that having nothing in common, so our film is about shattering the forms of postmodernist architecture.”
Mirrored was created in ten days including scouting, shooting, editing and grading. To make navigating the city easy, Ill-Studio decided to keep the team small. “We really wanted to make this film as spontaneous as possible so we didn’t have an elaborate plan in place,” Leonard explains. “We had an actor, a mirror, a camera and a whole city to play round with for three days.” Spontaneity is a key part of Ill-Studio’s film, and it adds intrigue to the film’s pedestrian setting. “The best shots in the film ended up being the ones made by accident, and that’s exactly what we were aiming for.”
The studio shot the film on 35mm giving it a textured aesthetic and the choice of film was also related to the shooting process. “You don’t shoot film like you shoot digital. It pushes you to think of your shot list differently. There’s not as many tries to get a shot right, so either every detail has to be planned in advance or you just go with the flow and shoot until you don’t have any reel left, which is what we went with,” says Thomas.
www.itsnicethat.com/features/random-acts-ill-studio-mirrored
Artists referenced:
BRUCE MCLEAN
Mirror Work 1969
- clearly inspired many fashion shoots
JOAN JONAS
Mirrors Performance 1969
https://vimeo.com/77162791 Notes:
- Love how the scroll is super long at the beginning and she reads off of it - Impactful
- Use of silence throughout the whole performance is a really engaging tip for the slow motion movements of the actors
- Half an hour of silence is very hard for people of this day and age to do, which is an interesting challenge.
- It's like watching raindrops dance in slow motion - oddly quite calming
- Oscillating ripple effect by moving the mirrors back and forth in front of the audience evokes the feeling of being by the sea and feeling defenceless.
- 23:20 the artors make dog like wolf cries, it ends at 23:43. Humming during the last scene.
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