free falling - concept note

8/3/2019 Free Falling - Concept Note

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Free FallingA film by Suvani Suri, Simran Chopra & Chayan Deb

Concept Note

Free Falling is an attempt to remediate two very old oral media forms poetry and

public speaking, into a film.

The theme of the film is Paradox of Freedom. It features Rabindranath Tagores poem

Where the mind is without fear (1901), Martin Luther KingJr.s speech I have a dream

(1963) and Jawaharlal Nehrus speech Tryst with destiny (1947). All of them talk about

freedom in some sense. While Nehru speaks about the freedom of nation state and King

about freedom from inequality and racial bias, Tagore speaks about freedom of the inner

self. Free Falling essentially remediates the context in which these were written/

spoken. Also the final medium being a film, liberties offered by the medium have been

taken to modify the linear structure of the poems and speech to suit our context.

The actor, unlike in a conventional film, does not speak but only uses her facial

expressions to mime. The accompanying vocal narrative is a rendition of excerpts from

Tagores poem and some excerpts from the original recoding of Kings and Nehrus

speeches. The editing technique of montage has been employed to remediate the

context of the poem and speech. Shots of actors performance are juxtaposed with shots

from popular advertisements from TV and print. Additionally, attempts have been made

to exploit the properties of film to hyper mediate - graphics have been super-imposed on

video in certain places and multiple video windows have been used in certain other

places. Separate realities that form contingent parts of a single image or consecutive

moments in time are presented to the viewer at a few portions of the film.

Todays world of consumerism and material pursuit is whats real for us. TV is real,

internet is real and everything it serves out is real for us. The infinite choices they offer

are real for us. We find it difficult to extricate ourselves from this ever growing web of

visual and electronic media. In a way, we are not free any more. The age of the image andits shadow has us at its feet. The freedom which we talk about, rejoice and celebrate, in

which we take pride...are they really real? Free Falling prompts the user to engage in a

debate with himself and confront the paradox of freedom that exists.


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Script Explanation

Free Falling starts with a film leader countdown interspersed with TV static. It is to make

the viewer aware that the new media object which he/she is going to watch is a film, andhas got elements of TV in it.

As the actor enacts to the opening lines of Where the mind is without fear, a clip from

Mountain Dews TV ad comes in. The attempt is to prompt the viewer to interpret the old

poem in a modern day consumerist context. The Fair & Lovely logo coming out from the

pupil is another such attempt.

Kings words about every mountain and rough places being made plain has been

interpreted as the massive globalization which we have witnessed in last few decades

and which has turned each of us into global souls. Super brands have continuously

twisted their identity and stormed into different nations, and in a way homogenized the

whole world, thereby making every mountain low and every rough places plain.

As Nehrus famous lines At the stroke of midnight play, the screen repeatedly splits to

emphasize awakening to light and freedom. The next shots, ironically, are all night

shots. They show neon lights and billboards- all shining, glowing and proclaiming the

virtues of certain products. These shots have been borrowed from McLuhans Wake,

which essentially talks about his ideas of the world as a global village and the

symbolism and implications of advertising. A screen slides in showing an overwhelmedactor, who is then again lured back by various cosmetic and lingerie products, referring

to our notion of the bodily image and what is beautiful. At this point, the image of the

actor which was earlier in sepia tones also gets transformed to a more techno filtered

look. The next shot depicts the overdose of consumerism which we all encounter every

day: Numerous brands feed into the dormant actors head.

The Freedom TV airs excerpts from the Apples 1984 ad, where people who look like

clones of each other sit motionless like vegetables are constantly tutored by a man who

looks like a tyrant, referring to the world of consumerism that has bombarded us withimage and rendered us all in want of the same things. The athlete runs in and throws the

hammer on the screen to liberate them. Inspired by the classic image of a news

announcer, with a screen of news behind her in a studio, the shot is composed of two

different spaces.

Derived from Eisenstein's montage theories which are based on the idea that montage

originates in the "collision" between different shots in an illustration of the idea of thesis

and antithesis, this dialectical nature of this technique has helped elucidate our idea in

this sequence and the previous one with the ads scrolling in the same window space asthe actor who presents a glamorous self.


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The film ends with a sequence showing the liberated man falling past huge billboards and

advertising on buildings, to the sound of the last lines of Tagores poem Into this heaven

of freedom my father led my country awake. These lines bring to the fore the ironic

ideas of freedom and heaven that is real for us today contrasting with the ideas with

which the poem was written. A rendition of the poem sung by the self proclaimed urbanfolk singer Sushmit Bose has been used here- a term he coined to describe his style of

singing and song writing, which largely reflects the themes of the moral and civic decay

of modern India. His songs lament the contradictions of the urban life and all the

chameleon changes in a fast developing civil society as he quotes.

The name of the movie Free Falling, taken from the Tom Petty song by the same name,

flashes in this sequence, implying the very same- the bottomless pit of consumerism and

want that we are falling into, in a free world. Contrastingly, another interpretation of

this sequence, since it follows the one where the tyrant is destroyed, could also be thatof the man falling through this version of the world, beyond it, into another version (the

real heaven?) devoid of all these intrusions and temptations.

CreditsIn order of appearance

Where the mind is without fear (1901) - Poem by Rabindranath Tagore

Mountain Dew (2009) TV commercial by Benetone Films

I have a dream (1963) Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tryst with Destiny (1947) Speech by Jawaharlal Nehru

McLuhans Wake (2002) Documentary film by Kevin McMahon, David Sobelman

Tron Legacy: End Titles (2010) Soundtrack by Daft Punk for Tron Legacy

1984 (1984) TV commercial by Ridley Scott for Apple Computers

Flynn lives (2010) - Soundtrack by Daft Punk for Tron Legacy

Mad Men (2007) - TV series by Matthew Weiner

Where the mind is without fear (2010) - Song by Susmit Bose


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