Experimental Art Installation film made for the Malice Arts: 1984 – A Neon Dystopia event.
The film is based on the confessions from Orwell's 1984…it played out on a giant screen at a club night and in a soundproofed room. Almost everyone who features in the film was a non-actor, and needed to feel like an authentic member of a tortured populace. So I created a soundscape with the wonderful Toby Slade-Baker of ThirtyTwo music that began playing as each cast member entered the blackened studio one by one. My fab DoP Yiannis Manolopoulos and I were balaclava'd up. Lovely producer Franzi Nicolaus led each cast member in backwards and they were 'handed over' to me, at which point I blindfolded them and whispered choice words into their ear. I then led them across the studio to the camera, removed their blindfold and instructed them to look down the lens and respond honestly and emotionally to the music. At points they were screamed at and gently whispered to, in order to generate genuinely uncomfortable emotional responses. They each prepared their personal spoken confessions before the shoot. Each cast member had only one unbroken take. I was blown away by each and every cast members' unwavering commitment to this uncomfortable, yet rewarding piece of filmmaking.