Snow White and the Seven Mice

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN MICE

RESULTS OF A VIDEO FOR ARTISTS COURSE 

 

  “BLESSED ARE THE CRACKED FOR THEY LET IN THE LIGHT” (Gathered Images, Brighton)

The finished thing is still a little rough but my idea is there and the thought process behind it is all below. My favourite shots are the pink ones at the end and Mickey makes me laugh every time!

  Using work I had done previously on a play called Frotting Reality  by Alex Evans I created a film version of the story of Elsa, one of three narratives in the play.

  'Elsa is nice, quiet woman from California who moves to Edinburgh, after inheriting a whole tenement block to herself. It is suggested in the play that she’s escaping from some event on the other side of the Atlantic. She’s a little lonely, and slightly frightened to be on her own in a huge place, particularly when she starts to hear strange noises and sees things peering in at the window on the fourth floor...Along with a group of seven mice with a hatred for Walt Disney and everything he stands for, and a habit of running up huge grocery bills for Elsa'. - Alex Evans

'After seeing the doctor and being given a bottle of dangerous looking pills to combat her ‘depression’, Elsa returns home to Emmaus. As Emm calls her to bed, she throws the pills away. So what if she’s hallucinating and living in a fantasy world? It beats the shit out of reality' (Evans, 1)

 “...I was feeling a little bored earlier on. There was mindless pap on the television, as usual...Jim Bowen grinning like a bemused zombie, the clunk of the snooker balls, all the dazzle of the lights. Gnawing away. So I turn it off, and went upstairs, to the roof...and watched the sun setting (Evans).


I sat and wrote the story board for the film in one sitting whilst 
listening to Sigur Ros's Saeglopur. 

Elsa's narrative in the play, put simply, is that she becomes depressed and shuts out the world. She opts for her own delusional world, one where she embraces her mid, represented through her imaginary friend Emm. She kills off reality be killing off the imaginary mice she has also conjured up and whom speak constantly to her about the outside world. 

For movie references see the end of The Descent where a woman, who's mind is unable to cope with the trauma going on around her, imagines her escape from a cave of mutants. As an audience we see her escape from under the ground and break free, but then as a truck rushes by her the next camera shot takes us back to her in her underground prison. Whether she is conscious or not of having not escaped we do not find out. 



Also see the TV series of Tony Kushner's Angels in America and the character Harper Pitt who stays in her flat all day and takes pills to numb herself to reality and embraces her hallucinations.

I decided to present the film using reality and illusion shots. I used shots of world disasters and so on from Youtube to convey the reality outside her fourth floor flat. I also used scenes from Dinsey's Snow White in reference to the seven mice in the play named after the seven dwarves. 

The delusional shots were made from shooting the inside of the flat and her imaginary friends. 

     


“Mickey Mouse? (contemptuously) Fucking Mickey Mouse, is a fucking cartoon character. Fucking Mickey Mouse has nothing to do with real life...” (Evans).

Post Modern anxiety.

The part of her mind that is trying to kill off any hope in fantasy.

The Disney footage of Snow White became highly present and important in the story telling of the film. The more I edited the more I realised that the mice were indeed the seven dwarfs, Esa was Snow White and Emm was the Prince.

I decided to use this scene early on after my mother described to me a dream she had had in relation to our conversation the week before on death and burial.

Quotes From The Play

“Elsa: (To audience) I think I need a holiday

Mouse 3: We thought maybe the moon” (Evans).

Travelling to the stars where the moon represents the feminine.


    

NOT Disneyland. Mickey mouse. Bastard. Mickey Mouse, you never see him eating cheese, do you? Mickey Mouse is essentially assimilationist...” (Evans).

"(sharp intake of breath) Friends!”(Evans),

Friends is just another product of post modernism. The mice are constrained by time because they panic that they will miss their television programme.

 “Video? Bastards...the death of cinema,the end of the narrative and the decline of morality...” (Evans).

“She’s weird, huh?” (Evans).
Judgement.

Mouse 3: Excuse me Elsie?

    Elsa: ELSA. Yes?” (Evans)
 Identity.

“We were wondering...these little blue pellets in the boxes that say Rentokil, are they cheese, by..um..any chance?”(Evans).

She kills off the part of her mind that reminds her constantly of post modern society -specifically of the inevitable count down to death and loss.

“Its too big. And lonely. And I think I may be losing it a little. (She notices the guys looking at her) Hi? (They look embarrassed)” (Evans).

“...so I scream and scream. I screamed so hard and long, I just carried on, hard as I could, and from about half way through screaming, I just kept going because I was scared of the silence if I stopped...” (Evans).

The Mirror Phase.

 “So, I guess I’d better go home. I always kinda liked railway stations – all human life is here, you know; I could sit and watch people all day. And I really don’t want to go home at all...”(Evans).

   

She sleeps with Emm at the end. She chooses her mind over reality. She has sex with her mind – she ‘frots’.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Inspiration

GILES     I believe that’s called growing up.

BUFFY   I'd like it to stop then, okay?

GILES       I know the feeling.

BUFFY    Does it ever get easy?

GILES     You mean life?

BUFFY   Yeah. Does it get easy?

GILES     What do you want me to say?

BUFFY   (looks up at him) Lie to me.

GILES     Yes, it’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.

BUFFY   Liar.
(Whedon, Lie To Me)

ANGEL: This isn't some fairy tale. When I kiss you, you don't wake up from a deep sleep and live happily ever after.
BUFFY: No. When you kiss me I wanna die.
(Whedon, Reptile Boy)

Hanna Inspiration

Hanna is a film about a young girl, Hanna, trained as an assassin by her father in the arctic. One day she tell him she is ready to go into the real world and kill the woman who killed her mother. He leaves her and they make a plan to meet at The Brother Grimm’s House in Berlin. When she gets there she discovers that her father has lied to her her whole life and that she is the result of a government experiment to create super humans. At the end of the film the woman Hanna has set out to kill comes from out of a sculptured wolves mouth gun in hand and Hanna has no choice but to shoot her. 

The director describes it as a fairytale, about a girl growing up and about a father letting his child go out into the world.


Hanna’s soundtrack by The Chemical Brothers is outstanding. It made me realize just how important all the different components of a film are – without the music Hanna would not nearly have had the same effect on me. Later I went on to make a video with a track from the movie, and captured the hearts of my flatmates when I played the song to them for the first time and thereafter.

Dream how I dream to feel

Dream how I dream to feel

And everything and all it is and ever was

Begin again, Begin Again

Dream

How I dream to feel

And all it is and ever was

Begin again, begin again, begin again,

To feel finally for real

(The Chemical Brothers - Hanna's Theme)

Sputnick Sweetheart Inspiration

"What I'm getting at is that people have to come up with a clever strategy if hey want what they know and what they don't know to live together in peace. And that strategy - yep, you've got it! - is thinking. Otherwise we collide...want to avoid collision but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening to the grass grow - not thinking...The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and nerve coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time" (Murakami, Haruki. 2002. Sputnick Sweetheart).

“In dream you don’t need to make any distractions between things. Not at all. Boundries don’t exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don’t hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites” (p148).

“Lady did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?...I love that line. That’s gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. And bleeding” (p149).

DVD COVER

BACK OF DVD COVER *should say Rachel Logan!