The Year of Living Dangerously

The title sequence from Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously features the puppetry of Wayang Kulit. The sequence was recommended to me to by Mar Elepano who lived in Jakarta for five years and who is a great resource for my research into the puppet theater of Indonesia. He explained to me that Wayang Kulit was banned by the Islamic fundamentalists in the government because it had supposed connotations of idolatry and polytheism. This tradition also has a place in Hindu culture, where they perform selections from the Ramayana. Seeing Mr. Weir's film helped me to understand how these puppets move. There is some very interesting motion blur in between each pose of the puppets. Also, the puppeteers don't always keep the puppets flush against the fabric, so the projections can become distorted. The puppets don't hide the fact that they're not three-dimensional, even though they're in a three-dimensional space. Sometimes a puppet will slightly rotate and you'll see its thin profile. The other aspect of Mr. Weir's title sequence that struck me was the music. It was full of tension and it used the instruments that accompany the Wayang Kulit.

City of God

Moving ON

With these character designs that I've done so far, I 've decide to move on and begin casting actors, finalizing the script and using these characters to block out each scene. To refine the timing and pacing, I need to record my actors.
The recent character design work has been very exciting. I think I'm discovering a look for the film. At this point, I will look between the traditional wayang kulit puppet theater of Java and the innovative film, City of God. My next move will be to develop style frames after filming my live elements, namely water, silk, fog, and dust. The scene from City of God where Lil Dice becomes Lil Ze was always the most interesting in the film for me. The Candamble priest is mystified through the lighting, the camera and the editing. The editing uses frequent punch-ins and defocusing to give the sequence and visceral feeling. I will focus on using warm tones for this film. At first, the terrace was going to be lit with the cool light of the moon, but after discovering the inspiring material mentioned above, I make my first film using the reds, yellows, blacks, and whites, with only sparing blues. Though I will need to do more detailing to the puppets before I assemble them in Maya, I am at a good place to leave the puppets for now while I work on other aspects of pre-production. Also, in my meeting with Prof. Sheila Sofian today, I realized that for a short film, including Herodias in the story just makes it much more complicated in confusing. She was more of an observer, but it was hard to develop her in tandem with Salome in such a short piece. I feel a weight has been lifted from me, because the script is simpler, yet I have to decide whether Salome is his stepdaughter or his real daughter, a decision which could greatly increase the degree of Herod's incest.

Wayang Kulit Clips

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMRHi2WVoZQ

I just discovered about twenty clips of Wayang Kulit from Indonesia, Malaysia, and India. Here's a good one where they use a real torch to light it and this produces some very interesting effects.

Baudelaire

"...Yet slender her shape and graceful, daintily chiselled her hip and her shoulder, slim and supple as a writhing serpent. Full young is she still. Was her soul exasperated beyond bearing, her senses by ennui gnawed and tormented, that she flung wide the door to the panting pack of wandering and accursed desires?
Yet, for all thy passion, couldst thou not sate thy vengeful lover? Did he whelm thy dully yeilding flesh with the immensity of his desire? Answer, defiled corpse, and tell me, ghastly head, did his fevered arm then raise thee by thy chill tresses and on the cold teeth imprint the last farewell?..."

"The Martyr" - Flowers of Evil - translated by Beresford Egan and C. Bower Alcock

Wayang Kulit

Finally, after spending so much time thinking about my cut-out puppets, did I push myself to look up one of the most interesting forebearers of silhouette animation, the Javanese Wayang Kulit. Looking at the intricate work of the designs, cut in animal hide, I found a great inspiration for my puppets. Also, after reading a little about the great tradition, I learned it has a lot of similarities to opera, which connects it directly to Salome. Again I met briefly with Prof. Panushka and she affirmed my feeling that I am on the right track. Also, creating the world of light and texture that these silhouettes abide in will be an exciting challenge for compositing. Sophie O'hara also showed me the intriguing water puppets of Vietnam. The whole puppet theater takes place in a pool of water, with the puppets submerged as they perform. Of course, I immediately thought of Jokanaan, the prisoner and the prophet, submerged in water as he sits in the well. My research is giving my project great momentum.

New Direction

After a review with our faculty advisor, Christine Panushka, I decided to backtrack to where I began with the character designs. What was working were the simplified shapes and forms of earlier designs. The more I looked at references like classic actors, etc, the more realistic and rigid my designs became. I was frustrated and I felt like I was chasing my tail because this is an animated piece, it should not be so close to live-action. I started to play more with silhouettes and I looked again at frames from Lotte Reininger's masterpiece, "The Adventures of Prince Achmed." This film has a very sensual mood and this serves the story very well especially where the prince and princess are concerned. Instead of using pure black pieces, I dripped paint on wet drawing paper and let in dry in different fractal patterns. I scanned each piece at high-res and began to cut things out with my "digital scissors." So far this is what I have for Salome.