In my pitch today, Triptychs had been mentioned in the feed back for the style of shooting that I wanted to achieve for my FMP.
Having got back home with a computer at the ready, I started to look into ways that this certain style of exhibiting a motion picture could be done. One in particular that I had found was a new advert made by Diesel that has the triptych style of presentation, whether it was shown on three monitors was another thing.
[Ref: "Only The Brave", Directed by Legs, 2009]
Obscure as it is, it's a huge inspiration to me and what I want to achieve. There's fleeting moments of synch between the 3 pieces of film, that truely make it stand out. You're drawn to the middle square, but as you start to stray off from the man you're greated with different images that grab your attention again and you sit there trying to piece it all together.
Following the video on the site is a little bit about it and some Q&A'S
Sub Rosa presented Legs with the video contingent of Diesel's "Only The Brave" fragrance launch. They knew they wanted more than one film, but were open to exploring exactly how many films and how they would function together. The themes Legs needed to include were "Heart", "Mind" and "Nerve". Legs pitched them a "film triptych" concept featuring individual films for each theme. The idea was create a fourth experience when watching all of the films at once.
Questions and Answers with Legs
How do you feel about the three films as the individual clips? How did you come up with the idea to have all three play at once tell a story together? Was this always the main idea?
Although all the films stand alone in their own way, the real magic appears when the films are played as a triptych. The triptych was always the main idea and we knew that the Heart and Nerve stories would serve as visual punctuation for what the center Mind piece was saying. It made a lot of sense to us that the Mind piece would be the conduit and narrate the whole piece, while Nerve and Heart served more as visual poems.
Why did you want to have all three play at once?
It made sense for the three themes of the campaign and was a new and challenging thing for us in terms of writing, shooting and editing. Plus we were excited to see if we could pull it off as nicely as our boards looked.
Did you have any film references for the spots? Or anything else that inspired or influenced you?
A ton of influences are at play here. Overall, there is a Lynchy feel. But we were really inspired by Jurgen Leth's "The Perfect Human" for the Mind piece as well as the art films of Stan Brakhage. The Nerve piece was inspired by David Lynch's "Lost Highway", Jim Jarmusch's "Mystery Train" as well as Sam Raimi and Dario Argento's horror cinematography techniques. That one was a lot of fun to research. The Heart story was influenced by Led Zeppelin's "The Song Remains the Same" and the trippy graveyard scene in "Easy Rider".
What was the feel/experience you were going for?
Since we were dealing with the Mind, we wanted to try to push it as far as we could and get as strange and psychadelic and visceral as we possibly could. We wanted this thing to be funny and strange enough for people to lose themselves a bit and get in to it and perhaps find deeper meaning.....and see all the interrelations in a vivid way.
Tell me about the production process of making this project a reality? It must have been challenging, yes?
Our concept was very ambitious. We shot two cameras on each day of shooting and really just worked as a team to be as mobile and efficient as possible so we ended up getting a lot to work with. We also were blessed with an incredibly dedicated editor, Paul Snyder at Lost Planet, who really went above and beyond to make this thing work.
How many days was the shoot? How long was it in post in order to make the spots match up?
We shot 3 proper crew days and 2 bare bones pick-ups days. The post was about 13 insanely long days.
Anything I should know?
Geremy composed all the music. Paul Snyder is the editor of the universe. And Legs is available for birthdays, weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.
[Ref: "Only The Brave", Interview with Legs, Itsartmag.com, 2009]
