In the film version of my life today. I would have been standing in a giant doorway. The camera would be inside, looking out. Music would come in quietly at first. Close up on my face, cut to a long shot as an explosion is heard and the building behind me implodes (1min30 in music). This sends a cloud of dust billowing in through the doorway, obscuring me from view (Que slow motion shots of smoke from a few angles. The music would build and then as it reaches a crescendo I would walk out from the smoke and dust. I’d then walk up towards the camera. It would cut to a close up of the perspiration on my upper lip and a small graze on my cheek before I delivered some super cool action hero line.
Funnily enough, this didn’t happen.
Today I did the first day of many with Firenza Guidi, director of Bianco. The day started with a completely unplanned activity, which arose because the Bianco set being unloaded through the back loading doors at Nofitstate HQ. Firenza spotted the opportunity and dove straight into putting us through our paces with a small improvisation activity. This was based around us bringing to life the space seen through the ‘frame’ created by the loading doors. This glamorous space is the slightly dingey alleyway that lies between Nofitstate and the old currently-being-demolished Royal Welsh Opera building. It was mid way through this when we were mid improvisation when two serious looking guys in white boiler suits walked round the corner with goggles hard hats and dust masks. They then proceeded with a reasonable level of urgency to gesture upwards and then point for us to get away from the building and back inside, so we did. How exciting!
To cut a long story short they were just being cautious. They were worried about windows blowing through while they were bringing down the opposite corner of the building but that’s not the point.
More to come on 'the film version of my life’ as I think it’s an interesting idea. Taking aspects of your life, ranging from the mundane to the out of the ordinary and imagining how it would look if it would be in a film. It’s an idea inspired by something Orit Azaz has mentioned on a number of occasions. In the context of live performance she talks about 'the film version’. This is when you start thinking about all the things you would do with a certain piece of vocabulary if you were making a film and not a live performance.
Maybe there is indeed a live performance that could be based on this idea. In a similar way to how Noodles is based on considering the line between on/off camera in TV. Something to think about I think.