STALKER

 

Director:	Alex Coburn for Activate Films
Producer:	Isobel Conroy
Released:	1998 (mastering date 2.2.1998)
Duration:	4.34

 

 

 

 

Watch STALKER on Vimeo.

 

 

STALKER is obviously a track whose very title conjures up an immediate and definite image. The mood of the song is clearly defined from the opening sequence and Alan was adamant that the film should reflect its atmosphere without degenerating into the macabre. A successful end result would exploit the uncomfortable elements of the track whilst perhaps throwing some new light on its narrative.

 

It featured vocalist Douglas McCarthy and Connie Chiu, a Chinese Albino with violet eyes who has appeared in several promos before.

 

 

THE ORIGINAL TREATMENT:

Edgy, dark, noir-ish with muted flat neon colours picking up on the style of the previous video ('Drifting') and the artwork for the singles and album. Fast-paced and dynamic, blurred and scratchy; Use bits of old scratched film, some words / images possibly scratched into black leader and inserted to create a feeling of unease. White scratches over some colour frames. Semi-fish eye lens will create impression of a peep-hole slightly distorting the image. Addition of a mask over the lens will create the black circular frame - this will give a threatening POV type style. I envisage most shots being filmed quite tight, apart from certain establishing shots of the city (New York) and the hotel room (which should be red and warm with a touch of madness, compared to the cold threat of the city).

 

A man pursues / watches a strange woman in a hotel room. The characters will play parts as if there was a big plot that hasn't been revealed to us. Possibly a man who has picked up a woman, had an affair and she now no longer wants to know - his obsessive desire takes over.

 

There could even be a suggestion that he has or wants to kill her or himself. All the shots will tell us something about the story but not enough to know how it ends. Key elements could include a phone off the hook, a hand thumbing through a phone book, neon lights at night, hands on flesh, tube train at night, empty threatening corridors, peephole and the penetrating eye.

 

Doug's vocal to be sung in the same hotel room that features the woman, possibly with her lying on the bed behind him as if she is perhaps dead?

 

 

The first part of filming for STALKER involved a hectic trip to New York to capture the aura and ambience of the city.

 

The hotel scenes were filmed in London at the now closed 'Clarendon Court Hotel' on the Edgware Road. The exterior of the Clarendon Court Hotel, though run down and in need of a paint job, is as grand and as impressive as those Edwardian buildings that flank it, but once inside any similarities cease.

 

STALKER was shot on super 16mm, film stock designed to give a more cinematic look. With roughly 1 and a half hours of raw footage, the 'rushes' are processed at a laboratory and then transferred to video format (TK-telekenetic transfer).

 

At this point decisions are made as to the 'look' of the film. T.K. is an extremely sophisticated process which allows colour within the film to be saturated, de-saturated or even changed completely. Black can be 'crushed' to give a harder look, filters can be used to soften - there are a thousand different ways the raw film can end up looking.

 

With all the rushes now on betacam video tape, the images are digitised and, once loaded into 'Avid' (software which runs on Apple Mac computers), they can be accessed randomly.