The Fourth Place took four
days to make, had a crew of four, and was the fourth flick we've made.
Named after the David
Lynch PS2 ads, where that annoying woman yells out: "The Third
Place!"
The Fourth Place is the
first of my videos to be shown at a public screening.
Dave picks up the intercom
phone in the beginning of the video, just like what Bill Pullman did
in Lost Highway.
The opening music is a track
by Julee Cruise, who not only sang the Twin Peaks theme
but is also David Lynch's musical protégé. I thought it
was kinda appropriate.
The first video to use stereo
sound effects. The previous ones had stereo music, but the sound effects
were always mono.
The teapot transition sequence
is yet again another petty poke at the teapot girl from uni.
Remember her? She made this dumb art video which was basically three
static angles of a teapot. That's it... nothing else happens. You watch
a teapot from three angles. And it goes for 25 mins! So I thought I'd
one-up her dumb art-bitch ass by getting a transition of a teapot for
an entire sunset sequence!
The eyeball that Dave picks
up is none other than Pedro!
The heavily filtered shot
where I stab a knife into the ground is a reference to a similar scene
in Perfect Blue.
When Munky the Monkey shoots
the evil guy with the purple light saber, the theme from The Good,
the Bad and the Ugly can be briefly heard. Oh, and the gun he's
using is the same gun used by the agents in HotD2.
The sheet of paper that
the printer prints out has the numerical value of Pi printed on it,
though you can't really tell because we never shot a close-up of it.
But anyway, it's a reference to Darren Arranofsky's debut feature
film.
The song that I poorly lip-synch
to in the end is none other than the theme song of Enterprise,
the new Star Trek series with Scott Bakula. We thought it'd be pretty
cool to include that in, because it's such a silly song. Sorta like
the Creed song.
Simon was completely hung-over
the day we shot this (yes, that fucked up look on his face was authentic!).
Making him run around in the car park only made things worse, and in
between takes he was throwing up behind pillars.
After the first public screening
of The Fourth Place, I was approached by some guy I've never met before
and he told me that he loved it, and totally understood the video until
the football sequence. Shit, even Dave and I can't figure out the meaning
of the video. I was too drunk at the time to ask him what he thought
the meaning was, but I'm immensely interested to find out what it is.
A lecturer told me that
it was *predictable*. I'm not sure how that figures since it's totally
incoherent and unstructured… so I guess that I can just throw that
comment together with the other comments in the "Stupid-assed
lecturer remarks" bin. I'm sure by now you've all figured out
that the Time-Based Art course I'm doing in uni is run by dumb-asses.
I should've done Digital Media instead…
The football clip at the
end was taken from a game between the Rams and the Saints.
And the Saints won! (I'm not a big fan of the Rams)
My brother started printing
T-shirts of his own design, and gave me one as a gift. The "3
Sperms" shirt has since started appearing in my movies, beginning
with this one.
