Forming Moons is my independent debut film. I will try to describe this one-man production without revealing too much.
FIRST THING
I make 50 individual wax drawings every year. In 2018 I already had 50 drawings in May. My body of work also includes 5 electronic classical albums and experimental photography.
My work has to do with connecting things and ideas unconsciously. In the case of Forming Moons the first thing was a photo of a distant galaxy (NGC 4921). The second thing was the idea of discovering things inside one room.
PAINTING AND ISOLATION
Forming Moons was shot in Vaasa, Finland between June and December 2018. I made it completely by myself and the budget was 300 euros. Forming Moons was always a silent film and it never had a Finnish title. I've always wanted to make a film, and I wanted to make a silent film for several reasons. I love silent films, I knew my limitations and I value the medium as a visual artist.
Forming Moons is an expressionistic and experimental film with a narrative about painting and isolation. The title and the name of the fraternity poetically describes the monks. This fraternity was always mysterious and I never wrote the backstory. The film I was making didn't need it. The ideas told me what to do.
The film never had a script. First I filled a notebook with ideas, then I wrote down the structure. I tried to imagine the entire film. There were only lists, notes and designs.
All the themes on the soundtrack were composed during filming. The ambient side was made after I had all the footage.
The poster is a wax drawing and that is what I do most of the time. Painting is a way to get ideas and it was also part of the experiment in this film. I used every type of black paint I could find. There are 25 paintings and the last 15 emerge from the atmosphere and the unconscious. All paintings were done once - the last 15 were based on designs.
The way the film looks reminds me of 16 mm. It was never going to look amazing. I cared more about the images themselves. I built a tripod that had a long flexible neck and the rest was handheld. I attached the camera to a broomstick when I shot different animal points of view outside.
I admire the works of David Lynch and Carl Dreyer but I still wanted to make my own film. Eraserhead was one of the first films that made me want to create. I realised I wasn't just looking at the surface. I could see how it was made but I couldn't explain it.
