Nerves, Mad Scientists, Frankenstein’s Monster and An Explosion in the Lab

Yesterday was a pretty scary day for our group. Not only did we have to pitch ourselves, our interests in the different festival briefs, experiences and ideas to the other nineteen people in the group and a small group of experienced professionals but also to a video camera.

Even after a workshop on how to give a presentation with more structure, confidence and prowess, the one thing that I don’t think anyone was prepared for was the outpouring of brilliance and inspiration that was everyone else’s ideas. 

Nerves were there before, during and after our individual presentations, as well as the human problem of the power of hindsight and self-judgement. Yet nerves or not though what emerged, especially it seemed for the BFI Gothic group, the group I was also pitching to be involved with, was not only a sense of passion, but individual visions and ideas that could easily be intertwined, connected and fused together. Almost like we were a group of scientists each working together without knowing it to create one part of a whole monster.

Ideas included mad scientists, witchcraft and the dark arts, exploring the ideas of Gothic in literature, film, how Gothic has involved science, the idea of Gothic against horror and British Gothic. Things that would seem hard to fit into our original brief but worthwhile regardless. By the end of the seven Gothic presentations I kind of felt we had not only a festival programmed, but a fringe and a desire/interest to grab the attention of non-attenders of all ages outside of target audience group of 18-25.

The communication between our group also seemed to just start automatically from presentation to presentation. As we pitched our ideas it became nature to just link in and build those ideas on top of those previously mentioned. Pieces of the jigsaw seemed to slip into place.

From a personal stand-point the fact my presentation had to follow a succinct, in-depth and utterly brilliant powerpoint presentation with three small cue-cards at a time, that a mini-break had sort of disrupted the flow and focus on the room just before I started did leave me at first under-prepared. I don’t want to see the camera footage anytime soon but the out of body experience seemed to tell me things went as well as they could of.

In my pitch I spoke about my interest in Gothic from literature to film and that the brief would give me the chance to help work on, create and produce some form of  immersive theatre or film experience. Something I have only not been able to do with my theatre work this year. With some past experience of immersive interactive theatre-based game work that I have done within Bristol and London, my main focus was on pitching an idea that came to my head a week ago.

What interests me about Gothic is also the misconceptions of what it is and what it includes. Mainly the issue of where Gothic begin and horror evolved from. I pitched an idea for a theme of ‘Gothic vs Horror: Frankenstein Vs Zombies’ with the idea in mind of attracting young people to the Watershed and covering the ground in a very new way to what 2.8 Hours, the Bristol Zombie walk and tap into an existing market with a different idea.

I ad-libed the idea of perhaps changing that to focus on the idea of necromancy in Gothic and linking that into the mad scientist idea could be done in a sort of magic vs science theme as given how Frankenstein’s Monster is a zombie himself, there could be some interesting ways to use the concept. The one thing I was aware of and that did get mentioned is the obvious issue of the zombie genre has been done so much before…but hopefully there is life in this old corpse yet in some way…

Since the ideas of witchcraft vs. science has come to mind and an idea about a re-imagining of the legacy of Frankenstein is being to emerge thanks to inspiration from discussion in the previous weeks and thanks to the brilliance of my other Gothic candidates who I hope I’ll get to work with.

Whatever happens I know the BFI Gothic Season at the Watershed will be a a highly ambitious and fantastic event. Whether we have to scale back on our visions is one thing we might have to face, yet one thing I’ve learned working as a lighting and sound techy is that it’s better to have big ideas and know the effect and feeling you want an audience to feel. That’s something money can’t buy, plus you can cheat to create the same effect for less cost. There’s usually always a way. A monster will be created…and it will have a strong heart and soul.

2 thoughts on “Nerves, Mad Scientists, Frankenstein’s Monster and An Explosion in the Lab

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