Tue 23 Mar 2021
In response to my mentor meet with Max yesterday, the chat brought me to a point of needing to nominate the driver of my project and resolving any conflict, if any, with the proposed intention of my project.
My intention is to find a way of pulling out the stories that rest in the shadows and the unseen in objects, both materially and metaphorically, and turning those forces into a Projection Mapping installation.
My original intention was to depict The Rime of the Ancient Mainer, an epic tale with many hidden messages of sustainability. Max urged me to tell the Rime my way, whatever that way transpires to be.
By doing much reflection and the gnashing of teeth, I am ‘raising from the deep’ (nautical pun intended) a more articulated project driver, that being the intrinsic misogyny within the development and practice of Animation. As a working title I will call that driver “Womanim.”
I do not need to abandon the telling of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner to do this but I will take Part the Third as my starting point.
Part the Third introduces us to a ship on the horizon than comes alongside the Mariner’s. The ship is crewed by one, perhaps two, perhaps metaphorically by all women, who gamble for the lives on board the Mariner’s ship. They are LIFE-IN-DEATH and introduced by the verses:
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that woman's mate?
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.
I will tell the story of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner from the LIFE-IN-DEATH women’s point of view that will realize a narrative of the peril of erasing and ignoring women, especially when the question of the earth’s sustainability is paramount in today's global considerations and conversations.
Similar work was highlighted by Emmet Redding’s presentation of his MAGI final project showing filmmakers like Spielberg who have taken influence from ancient works like Jules Verne’s work to influence his depictions and storytelling in a big-screen method.
I believe a similar angle of violence and drama utilizing modern technological blockbuster methods if applied to my work has the potential to resonate with a massive international audience.
For my next step, I must now turn my attention to writing the draft Script.