The initial conceptualization of the project revolved around a paranormal or supernatural narrative. I wanted to exhibit the potentials of spaces that co-exists with ‘other’ beings. However, I decided to restart the project from scratch as I was not satisfied with the initial test shots.
The title ‘My Mother And My Cat Are Best Friends’ was my realization that my mother spends a lot of time as a housewife (25+ years!). I wondered if she felt lonely or bored at times and after the introduction of Tinkle, our house cat more than a year ago, I could feel she has something to find and take care of, as all of her children are already adults. She treats our cat like a baby.
Here is the hyper-lapse
https://vimeo.com/user63364813/review/358953276/44a0559558
Let me brief on the many things that are going on.
Firstly, I wanted to film in a ‘stream of consciousness’ attitude; where the images continuously flows from either point of direction. You can see certain scenes are reversed and to me; I took much of my inspiration of reading Murakami’s surrealistic novels. In 1Q84, there are two moons, being created by The Little People as ‘the shadow of heart and mind’ and two disparately separate lives slowly combine. Murakami’s novels often have two plots and they often converge and then diverge. To me, the reverse sequencing is the act of implying that there is a possible, alternative world that exists where my mother commits into the same routine, everyday. I choose her routine as regardless of the time of day, it is still the same routine albeit done differently.
Secondly, the audio of the project revolves around the surrealistic aspect of a multi-layered world that co-exists. These were done by splittin up the shot scenes into three segments.
- Kitchen
- Living Room
- Parents Bedroom
While photographing, I had used a zoom recorder to record the sounds of the space. This could have inclued the shutter sound, my cat meowing and/or my mom speaking. These are thus regarded as my field recordings. I wanted to incorporate the field recordings as a way to enunciate the overall mood and effect of the scenes.
Lastly, I used fades and color grading as transitions between two worlds as it begins to overlap. In my situation, the fade between two scenes are of two parallel ‘worlds’. One that is played correctly and the other is reversed. These two would explain the parallel worlds. The color grading also aids to help audience to distinguish between the real world and the ‘parallel’ that is, one is color and the other is black and white.
Reflection
Personally I like the concept but the execution could’ve done better. I do not like the way I had graded the scenes and the audio could’ve been better. Nonetheless, I prefer the audio aspect more over the film as its severe degree of layeredness provides contextual depth simply through using field recordings.