Surrealism Research

SURREALISM

Surrealism is one of the most important art movements of the 20^th century. It transformed not only painting and sculpture, but also literature, theatre and the cinema and even the way that people thought about their lives. The word ‘surreal’ is used to describe anything that is weird, bizarre or dreamlike, not simply in art, but in life itself.

The Surrealists rejected the logical world of reason and tried to explore the unthinking, or unconscious, part of their minds. They were fascinated by dreams, and many of them painted weird, dreamlike visions. The Surrealists were also interested in the imagination of children and the insane, which they saw as being uncorrupted by reason. Artists tried to approach their work without any thought beforehand, returning to a childlike state in order to produce works of pure imagination.

Their paintings were filled with familiar objects, which were painted to look strange or mysterious. They hoped their odd paintings would make people look at things in a different way and change the way they felt about things. Some of the art of this time is quite cruel and violent as well as very beautiful.

The Surrealists were struck by the magical, the marvellous and the unexpected. They looked for beauty in unusual places and objects, and in everyday objects placed in unexpected settings.

”Beauty should seize you by the throat” said Lautreamont, a 19^th century French poet who the Surrealists admired. He declared that beauty should be surprising like “the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table” and this dramatic image appealed strongly to the Surrealists’ sense of the bizarre.

Surrealism was practised across all the art forms – painting, sculpture, poetry, film, jewellery, dress and ceramic design. Dedicated Surrealists even lived their lives in a surreal way, performing consciously eccentric antics. These surreal gestures could be quite extreme, such as Salvador Dali’s lecture in a diving suit, but also could be less obvious, like Rene Magritte’s small but surprising rebellions in a life of apparent respectability.

The Surrealist movement began officially in Paris in 1924, when the French poet, novelist and critic Andre Breton wrote his first Surrealist Manifesto – a document setting out the aims of the new movement. In this manifesto Breton defined Surrealism as a movement in which imagination rules. He wrote, “Only imagination makes me aware of the possible.”

For Breton, the dream was the most important thing in art and in life. He was very interested in the findings of the Austrian doctor Sigmund Freud, who had made a study of the unconscious, which he believed was largely revealed through dreams. Freud thought that by interrupting the

meaning of his patients’ dreams he could help them to recover from disturbing mental conditions. In 1921, Breton visited Freud in Vienna and returned to Paris even more interested in the unconscious, and especially in dreams. He gathered about him a group of poets and painters who were also fascinated by the world of dreams.

The first Surrealist exhibition was held in Paris in 1925, but the movement soon spread beyond France. The Surrealist came from a wide range of countries, with major artists working in

France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain and even Mexico and the USA.

Some of the art of this time is quite cruel and violent as well as very beautiful. The artists, like the Dada artists before them, wanted to shock their viewers with the unexpected and make people think in new ways. Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. The movement was, among other things, a protest against the barbarism of the War and what Dadaists believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society.

Some well-known artists of this period were, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí.

Rene Magritte (1898-1967)

Born 21^st November 1898 in Lessines, Belgium.

Died 15^th August 1967 in Brussels.

Key works

The Assassin Threatened, 1926

The Lovers, 1928

Red Model, 1935

Rene Magritte was a member of the Surrealist group and his works have become synonymous with the movement. The oldest of three brothers, his father was a manufacturer and trader and they moved around Belgium quite a lot during Rene’s childhood, before settling down in Brussels when he was 20.

When he was eight years old Magritte had an experience that led directly to his wish to become an artist. Playing in an abandoned cemetery with a young girl he saw an artist painting, and was struck by painting as a magical activity. From the age of 10, Magritte took private lessons in painting. It was the ‘magical’ and disquieting aspect of art and life he responded to. His earliest memory was of a crate next to his cradle, which seemed to him very mysterious. Aspects of religion such as priests’ vestments, the smell of incense, church music and relics also fascinated him. He dressed up as a priest and held private masses in front of a homemade altar.

In 1912 a traumatic event struck the family. His mother, who suffered from depression, committed suicide by drowning. Her dead and bloated body was found three weeks later and brought back to the house where it remained in a downstairs room. Her nightdress had risen to cover her head, and the imagery of the female figure with a veiled head frequently appears in his work, for example in The Heart of the Matter and The Lovers.

From 1916 to 1918, Magritte studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. After completing his military service, he returned to Brussels, where he worked as a designer of posters and publicity material, and by painting large roses in a wallpaper factory.

In the summer of 1927, he moved to Paris where his art dealer, Camille Goemans had a studio that exhibited Surrealist works. Magritte created some of his finest paintings during his time in Paris. He also met the Surrealist poets Andre Breton and Paul Eluard. He disliked Breton’s strong anti-catholic views and following an argument with him returned to Belgium where he remained.

He lived an ordinary life. He took a morning walk with his dog to buy food for the day. He spent the afternoon in a café, and enjoyed meeting friends on Sundays. His house was deliberately middle-class, furnished with comfortable sofas and chairs and a baby grand piano. Interestingly he did not have a studio but painted in the dressing room next to his bedroom. He had always worked like this – in the kitchen or dining room with a single easel and a few paints, brushes and charcoal.

The Lovers-1928 may be a visual

depiction of the idea "love is blind".

Personal Values- 1951

Portrait Of Edward James- 1937

In 1938, Magritte took part in the International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris. His images present dreamlike scenes, which create a feeling of anxiety or panic. Men in bowler hats, naked women and steam trains often appear in his paintings, as do words, which add a further puzzling dimension to the work.

Magritte enjoyed the visual result of putting together objects and figures that have no relationship to each other. His paintings make things that we know and are familiar with seem strange by changing their scale and putting them in unexpected places. He often used the window frame as a suggestion of the illusion of our senses, for a painting in itself has been traditionally used as a window on some other world as if we could through the flat surface of a canvas to a three dimensional reality. Like Dali, Magitte was interested in the way a single shape can look like two entirely different things.

Magritte’s paintings did not gain much recognition during his lifetime, but after his death they became very popular. His style remained almost unchanged through his life.

Max Ernst (1891-1976)

Born 2^nd April 1891 in Bruhl, Germany

Died 1^st April 1976 in Paris, France

Key works

Of This Men Shall Know Nothing, 1923

Pietaor Revolution by Night, 1923

Two Children Menaced by a Nightingale, 1924

Ernst was one of seven children. He was born the year after his older sister, Maria, died at the age of six. This had a profound effect on Ernst and he later gave a poetic description of his birth: “On 2^nd April at 9.45 a.m., Max Ernst hatched from the egg which his mother had laid in an eagles nest and over which the bird had brooded for seven years.” This description reflects the important role that birds played in his imagination. He gave himself a bird identity, ‘Loplop, Bird Superior’, and included this bird in many of his paintings and drawings. The fairy tales that his mother told him also had a profound effect on his artist’s imagination.

Following his parents’ wishes, Ernst enrolled at Bonn University in 1909 and studied philosophy, psychiatry and art history. He was attracted to the art of the insane and began to study the drawings of mental patients, not interested in learning how to paint to earn a living, but in painting as a way to express a mood, such as desire or menace.

When war broke out in 1914, Ernst joined a gunners’ regiment as an engineer and was powerfully affected by his experiences. He wrote later: “How to overcome the disgust and fatal boredom that military life and the horrors of war create? Howl? Blaspheme? Vomit?” After the war ended he saw the beginning of a new life, and wrote: “On 1^st August 1914 Max Ernst died. He was resurrected on 11^th November 1918 as a young man who aspired to find the myths of his time.”

Ernst became an important figure in the Cologne group of Dada artists, working under the name Dadamax. In October 1918, he married Luise Strauss, a university student studying art history, and two years later they had a son. In 1921, Ernst was visited by the poet Paul Eluard, one of the founder members of the Surrealist movement. Ernst fell in love with Eluard’s wife, Gala (who would later become Dali’s wife!) He left his wife and went to live in Paris with Eluard and Gala where he also met Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism.

He had started making collages in 1919. By 1921, Ernst was already painting surreal images such as The Elephant Celebes, and in 1923, he painted one of the first Surrealist masterpieces, Of This Men Shall Know Nothing and dedicated it to Breton.

Ernst was staying at an inn by the sea one rainy day and began to stare at the wooden floor. Hypnotised by what he saw, Ernst took paper and pencil and began to make rubbings of the floorboards, moving the paper at random and and finding he had created a strange visionary world from his rubbings. He continued his experiments by rubbing paper or canvas on tree bark, making a trail of smoke using a candle, and smudging a blob of paint on his canvas. He said that by making art this way he was a ‘spectator at the birth of all my works’, suggesting that the works made themselves and were not the deliberate creation of an artist.

The technique of rubbing which Ernst developed from 1925 onwards is called by its French name, frottage. It became his favourite technique: “At random I drop pieces of paper on the floor and then rub them with black lead”. These textured images were then arranged to form a collage. Ernst cut out Victorian images and rearranged them to create sinister and provocative collages. One of the most famous showed two women holding hands on a sofa while a reptile climbed over one of them. By introducing surreal and disturbing images into Victorian interiors he turned scenes of polite conversation into a nightmare world of horror and disgust.

Temptation Of St. Anthony- 1945

Two Children Frightened By A Nightingale- 1924

His paintings contain an element of magic, and sometimes terror. Two Children Frightened By a Nightingale is one of his most famous images, and perhaps one of the first paintings to ever combine 3-D elements into the 2-dimensional space. The Temptation of St. Anthony is yet another version of an image about the tortured saint. Created just after the end of WWII, it may be also be a comment about the monstrosities of war.

Salvador Dali (1904 – 1989)

Born 11^th May 1904 in Figueras, Spain

Died 23^rd January 1989 in Torre Galateau, Spain

Key works

The Persistence of Memory, 1931

Autumn Cannibalism, 1936

Metamorphis of Narcissus, 1937

Lobster telephone (several versions)

Christ of St. John of the Cross, 1951

When he was a child, he showed strange behaviour and often interrupted his class in school. As he got older, he started to paint pictures that came from his dreams, which were scary and unreal. Dali went to art school in Madrid Spain but he got kicked out, and never finished. However, he continued to paint in a surrealist style drawing everyday items, but changing them in odd ways. For example, one of his paintings is of melting clocks.

Dali was a great showman in his dress and behaviour. He grew an immense moustache with waxed, curly ends, which he called his antennae and claimed these allowed him to connect to cosmic forces. In 1936, he gave a lecture in a diving suit, which nearly led to his death by suffocation. He wanted to make paintings using snail shells filled with paint, drive elephants over the Pyrenees mountains, have his house guarded by rhinoceroses, and fill a Rolls-Royce with cauliflowers. He played on this image of people thinking he was crazy. He once said, “the only difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad”.

Dali’s paintings show highly detailed imaginary or distorted figures and objects in impossible landscapes. Dali often painted the same things. Soft watches, crutches and ants appear often and the story of William Tell where his father has to shoot an apple balanced on his son’s head is a favourite theme.

In 1939, he was expelled from the Surrealist movement because of his greed and the twelve letters of Dali’s name were rearranged to form Avida Dollars or ‘greedy for dollars’. A New York department store in 1939 commissioned Dali to dress one of its windows, which he created as a disturbing surrealist nightmare scene which attracted huge crowds and held up the traffic. The storeowners removed some of the more outrageous exhibits but then Dali climbed into the display, smashed the window with a bathtub and soaked the amazed onlookers. Dali was arrested but later justified his actions saying that every artist has the right to defend his work to the limit.

The Persistence Of Memory- 1931

Sleep- 1937

Salvador Dali is, without doubt, the most famous member of the surrealist group. His painting, The Persistence of Memory almost stands alone as a symbol of the movement. The melted clocks represent the strange warping of time, which occurs when we enter the dream state. The stretched image of a man's face, which is at the centre of the painting, is believed to be that of Dali himself, and the landscape, which stretches out behind the scene, may perhaps represent Catalonia. Dali's painting of Sleep is also successful in its suggestion of the precarious balance of sleep. We realise that if a single crutch were to fall, the dreamer will awake.

One of Dali's most famous works is his Lobster Telephone, a telephone with a lobster in place of a receiver. Dali saw parallels between the lobster and the telephone, and included the telephone in many of his works.

Dali was very prolific throughout his life, creating hundreds of paintings, prints, and even sculptures. He also produced surrealist films, illustrated books, handcrafted jewellery, and created theatrical sets and costumes. His frequently odd and shocking behaviour also contributed to his fame.

There is no doubt that he thought much of himself, as he titled his autobiography "Diary of a Genius". His paintings rank him as a master, whose subject matter makes him a great modern painter.

Luis Buñuel, a surrealist filmmaker, approached Dali in 1927 with an idea for a film - Un Chien Andalou ('An Andalusian Dog'), which obeyed one rule and one rule only - there must be no explanation for any ideas present within the film. If it could be explained rationally or psychologically then it had no place in the film.

As Dali's career progressed he became more and more obsessed with money. He was known to sign blank sheets of paper in order for other people to paint a picture and then sell it at an exorbitant price.

Before he died at the age of 85 in 1989, Dali had created works in film, ballet, opera, fashion, jewellery, and advertising illustrations.

The influence of Surrealism on other forms of art

From the 1920s on, the movement spread around the world, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy and social theory.

Examples of Surrealist literature are:

Crevel's Mr. Knife Miss Fork (1931),

Aragon's Irene's Cunt (1927),

Breton's Sur la route de San Romano (1948),

Péret's Death to the Pigs (1929), and

Artaud's Le Pese-Nerfs (1926).

Music by Surrealists

In the 1920s several composers were influenced by Surrealism, including Bohuslav Martinů, André Souris, and Edgard Varèse, whose Arcana was created from a dream sequence. Souris and Magritte, worked on Paul Nouge's publication Adieu Marie.

Politics

Surrealists often had links with political ideals and activities. In the Declaration of January 27 1925, members of the Paris-based Bureau of Surrealist Research declared their support for revolutionary politics, and by the 1930s many Surrealists had strongly identified themselves with communism.

Surrealism and theatre

Antonin Artaud, one of the original Surrealists, rejected Western theatre, which he felt should be a religious and mystical experience. He wanted to link the unconscious minds of performers and spectators together. Artaud created the Theatre of Cruelty where emotions and feelings physically created a vision, closely related to the world of dreams.

This led to the Theatre of the Absurd whose inspiration came from silent film and comedy, as well as the tradition of verbal nonsense in early sound film (Laurel and Hardy, W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers).

Films by the Surrealist movement

Entr'acte by René Clair (1924)

La Coquille et le clergyman by Germaine Dulac, screenplay by Antonin Artaud (1928)

Un chien andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (1929)

L'Étoile de mer by Man Ray (1928)

L'Âge d'or by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (1930)

Le Sang d'un poète by Jean Cocteau (1930)

Jan Bucquoy's film Camping Cosmos (1996), André Delvaux’s Un Soir, un Train (1968), and Marcel Mariën's controversial film L'imitation du cinéma (1959), are representatives of the Belgian Surrealist school in cinema.

Antonin Artaud, Philippe Soupault, and Robert Desnos are among those most famous who wrote screenplays for Surrealistic films. Salvador Dalí even designed a dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Spellbound (1945), and Destino (1946) was created as a joint project between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney. Unfortunately, it was left unfinished because at the time, it didn’t seem profitable.

There is a strong Surrealist influence present in Alain Resnais's 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad.

Modern films considered surrealist

The animated films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata in the 1970s had a great deal of influence especially with the new Pop Surrealist fine artists around the world. Angel's Egg, produced by Mamoru Oshii and artist Yoshitaka Amano, is perhaps the most notable example of surrealist influence in animation.

Tex Avery's cartoons originated on film in the 1930s and 1940s, but his famous characters include Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Another Looney Tunes animator, Robert Clampett, was renowned for his surreal style in both story and visuals, primarily depicted in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery and Porky in Wackyland.

More recently, award winning films at Peter Dizozza's International Surrealist Film Festival have included Amy Greenfield's Wildfire (Eclipse Productions), a new film by Matthew Gray Gubler entitled The Cactus that Looked Like a Man, Lauren Hartman's PHANT, and Susan Ingraham's GoescarGo.

Later directors who made Surrealistic films

• Kenneth Anger (Fireworks and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome)
• Darren Aronofsky (π)
• Carlos Atanes (CODEX ATANICUS, FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions')
• Luis Buñuel (The Phantom of Liberty and The Exterminating Angel)
• Donald Cammell (Wild Side)
• Víctor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive)
• Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep)
• Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen and La Cité des enfants perdus)
• David Lynch (Eraserhead and Blue Velvet)
• Peter Greenaway (Drowning by Numbers)
• Nicolas Roeg (Performance and Walkabout)

Lars von Trier (The Kingdom)

Fantasy/Comic Surrealism

• Richard Elfman (Forbidden Zone)
• Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Time Bandits, and Twelve Monkeys)

Guy Maddin (Archangel and The Saddest Music in the World)

Anime/ Animation

• Ralph Bakshi (Heavy Traffic, Coonskin, Wizards, and American Pop)
• Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away)
• Mamoru Oshii (Tenshi no Tamago)
• The Brothers Quay (The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes)
• Jan Švankmajer (Faust and Alice)
• Chris Landreth (The End, Bingo and Ryan)

Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir)

Bibliography

www.wikipedia.org

www.surrealist.com

www.bbc.co.uk

www.eyeconart.net

www.encyclopedia.kids

www.dmoz.org/kids

Linda Bolton- Surrealists (Book)

Patrick Johnson (10S1)

Artwork Production Log

I tried to photograph the items in my artwork against clear, simple backgrounds which were easier to edit on photoshop. Some of the images were placed on white paper such as the apple and key. Others such as the mouth and hand were a bit trickier, and done against my white dining room wallpaper. The string was hung by a pin from the ceiling, the box was photographed in the attic , and the wellie outside. Later on, my design changed from a box to a sack, which I think works much more effectively. Mrs Kearns advised me to take these pictures again with her camera, as the photos weren't sharp enough.

Originally, my clock photographs took a long time to get just right. On some, my reflection was obvious, and on others, light shone off the clock face. The photos weren't all that clear, and so Mrs Kearns advised me to do them again. I experimented with various, but in the end decided on the one at the top left of the screen.

The final photographs for my art piece, which include a sack instead of a cardboard box, a green apple instead of a red apple, and the Science classroom door.

Step 1: You have just imported the image into photoshop. The image will appear on the screen.

Step 2: Go to the tool bar on the right hand side and click on the magic wand icon. Click on the main area of the photo.

Step 3: Press the delete button. The area you have chosen will now be deleted.

Step 4: Using the magic wand tool, click on a different section of the photograph.

Step 5: Delete this section.

Step 6: Using the rectangular marquee tool on the right hand side toolbar, highlight an unwanted area of the photograph.

Step 7: Delete this section.

Step 8: Repeat step 6 on a different area of the photo.

Step 9: Delete this section.

Step 10: Use the eraser tool on the right hand tool bar to erase all the unwanted remains around your photo. When you have done that, your photo should look something like the one above.

By Paddy Johnson

14 Days Of Isolation Art Work, Film Poster and DVD Cover

You may have to zoom in to read all the writing, especially on the DVD cover.

14 Days Of Isolation Film Script

14 Days Of Isolation Script

Introductory Scene:

Dimly lit science classroom. Camera is in the centre of a rather large double table. Lights flicker on and a solitary figure walks slowly into the scene. He seems solemn and quite depressed. He pulls up a nearby chair and sits down. After a brief moment, he turns to face the camera…

Guy (main character): Two weeks ago, the school was filled with people. Students and teachers roamed around constantly and Turton bristled with activity. Everyone went home for a long, relaxing break. Everybody, except me. I now find myself trapped from outer society. Alone, with limited water supplies and no food whatsoever. Looks like I’m stuck inside this classroom for the rest of the six week holidays.

Scene ends.

Scene 1: Hard Times

Montage (mix of footage and music: no dialogue). Camera is at the right side of a window next to the double table. The window blind is closed, and the room is quite dark…

Guy enters into the shot and walks towards the window. He slowly begins to open the blinds, until fully open. Light enters the scene, and Guy peers sadly out of the window, looking from left to right. He pauses here for a few seconds, before eventually walking out of the shot…

Camera is now positioned at the left side of the window, focused on the classroom. Guy walks from the window to the other side of the classroom.

Camera is positioned at the right hand door of the classroom, as Guy begins to take down chairs on the right hand bench, as if a class was about to start. The camera does not move, and he trails further and further away, until stopping at the window and walking back towards the camera…

Guy finally sits down at the same seat he sat on before. He stares at nothing for a second, before cradling his head in his hands and slamming his fist down on the desk. He then slumps down with his arm- outstretched forwards across the desk…

Scene 2: A Brief Conversation:

Camera is located on a nearby desk, focused on another adjacent desk. On the adjacent desk, there is a large tap central to the camera. After a few moments, Guy enters the shot, a water bottle in his hand.

Guy: Well Jacob, you’ve got to understand that I don’t want to be in this situation any more than you do.

Guy takes a seat central to the camera, and unscrews the top of his water bottle.

Guy: We’re just going to have to live this way. We’re not dead, that’s the most important thing.

Guy turns on the tap and fills up his water bottle. He gestures with the bottle to his left, where Jacob supposedly is.

Guy: Do you want a drink?

In Guy’s mind, Jacob doesn’t answer him, and Guy turns away looking frustrated and upset. He stands up and pushes his chair underneath the desk. He grabs the bottle lid and walks out of the shot.

Scene 3: Bed Of Solid Wood

Camera is focused on the central classroom bench. Guy enters to the right of the shot, takes his shoes off, and puts his coat on the bench.

Camera shot changes. Guy is now more central to the shot, and the tables are seen from the left side. Guy climbs onto the desk and lies down, pulling his coat over him.

Camera shot changes to the opposite side. Guy is lying down.

Shot changes to big close up on Guy’s face. His eyes are closed as he tries to fall asleep.

Scene 4: A Peaceful Dream

Music plays softly in the background. After a few seconds of darkness, Crosby beach is visible, a lone statue in the distance. Guy enters close to the camera, from the left and surveys his surroundings. He turns away from the camera and walks in the opposite direction. Camera does not move, and, after about ten seconds, Guy stops, looks back while shielding his eyes from the sun, and walks back towards the camera.

Transition begins from Guy walking back towards the camera, to Guy walking away from the camera. This time, the camera follows Guy in a sort of hand-held fashion. It isn’t too still, but at the same time, not too shaky. Guy walks towards the statue for about half a minute, and then the music fades out.

Transition swaps to a shot of Guy standing quite close to the statue, and he begins to speak, looking away from the camera and occasionally towards the statue.

Guy: These statues resemble me. Alone and solitary, split up from each other over great distances. But for these few statues, there is no reunion. They will never meet each other, speak to each other, and are forever condemned to be separated from their own kind.

Scene fades out into roughly five seconds of darkness.

Scene 5: A Terrible Nightmare

Camera focuses on a field in Fornby, with a lone figure visible in the distance. Rather dramatic music begins in the background, which suggests that either something is wrong, or something is going to happen. After a couple of seconds, Guy enters the scene from the left and looks around. He sees the figure and begins to behave strangely, looking rather distressed. He looks back towards the camera.

Guy is fixated to the spot in fear. The figure looms closer and the music changes dramatically. The figure begins to slow down and stands directly in front of Guy, to the right of the camera. Guy holds out his arm in fear, shaking slightly. The scene fades to black.

Scene 6: The Absence Of A Friend

Camera is focused on Guy’s face in a big close up. He wakes up with a start, eyes wide and gasping for breath. The shot lingers for a second before changing to…

The two desks which Guy is sleeping on are now visible. Guy picks up his coat and casts it aside, moving towards the edge of the desks.

Guy: Jacob, I just had the weirdest dream ever.

Guy gets off the bench.

Guy: This man, this strange man walked towards me.

Guy holds his arm out, gesturing.

Guy: He just stood there right in front of me. Then, I woke up.

Guy looks around as if puzzled, or looking for something.

Guy: Jacob? Jacob.

Guy exits the shot, looking for Jacob.

Camera shot switches to head of the classroom. A long desk is visible, and one of the desks Guy was sleeping on in the background. Guy enters the shot and looks underneath the desk.

Guy: Jacob? Jacob, this isn’t funny. Jacob?

Guy hurries towards the camera and out of the shot.

Camera switches to another longer desk, and Guy rushes to the end of it.

Guy: Jacob? Jacob?!

Guy walks towards a side door, tries it, then walks away slowly. He exits the shot.

Side shot of the main classroom door. Guy enters the shot and tries the classroom door. He knows there is no chance of it opening, but to his immediate surprise the door opens slightly. A smile covers Guy’s face, his eyes wide in disbelief. He tugs at the door again and again until it finally swings open. He slowly walks round it.

Guy: I don’t believe it.

He goes to the other side of the door, and finally regains himself.

Guy: I’m free!

He hurriedly closes the door behind him and the scene finishes.

Scene 7: The Return

Camera is near the end of a long corridor. Guy has closed the door behind him and is visible on the right of the shot. In the distance, the same man from his nightmare is now in reality. The problem is, Guy hasn’t yet noticed this.

Camera changes to an over the shoulder shot of the man. He starts moving and the camera follows him. Music starts softly in the background, screeching violins.

The shot changes to in front of the man, and walks backwards as the man carries on.

A medium close up of Guy follows. He sees the man, and the happiness on his face has been replaced by horror at seeing him. After a few moments, he retreats out of sight.

Shot changes in front of the man once again.

The camera is just behind the man, as he pushes a set of double doors open to the area Guy has just been. He turns to where Guy has gone, and walks down a set of stairs. We can clearly see a knife behind his back, which suggests he has murderous intentions.

He reaches the bottom of the stairs and walks slowly forward, the camera following him in an over the shoulder fashion. Visible in the background is Guy, struggling uselessly to open a blue door, which is clearly locked. The camera moves closer to him in a medium close up of his hand wrestling with the door handle.

Guy finally gives in and lets go of the handle, sinking helplessly lower and lower to the ground, an expression of terror engraved on his face.

The camera switches, as if to show the scene from Guy’s point of view. The man walks forward slowly and bends down to face Guy level to level. He smiles in manic glee, and the film suddenly ends there, proposing a cliff-hanger ending and making way for the credits.

By Paddy Johnson 10S1