The Place to Be. The Adventure Begins

The Creative Synthesis

Here's the thing that's got me fired up lately. I've discovered filmmaking can be the unified field that brings all my creative chaos together.

Yeah, I know – I'm already juggling work as a singer-songwriter, psychedelic experimental soundscape artist, abstract expressionist painter and collage artist, and poet.

That's a load of stuff before I even think about filmmaking. But this isn't about just adding another thing to the pile.

It’s more about synthesis.

Filmmaking lets me weave together the written and spoken word, the visual art, and the music and experimental soundscapes all into one cohesive medium. It's like finally finding the missing piece that makes sense of all these disparate creative modes I've been exploring.

Diving Into the Lynch Zone

So I'm getting serious about this film adventure. My direction is aimed squarely at the alternative and experimental world.  I've always been a big lover of David Lynch's films, especially the sound design part.

I'm diving deep into those more, as well as other great filmmakers' work. Researching, learning and taking notes and absorbing everything I can, so I'm fuelled up and feeling inspired to create film art of my own.

My Shemboid work already fits in well with the experimental sound design field, and that's where I'm starting my journey in film. I have a new Shemboid album already recorded, called The Place, along with video footage from a livestream performance on Twitch, when the music was made.

The Place: Where It All Begins

I've already created a theme for the album. As the music’s quite laid back for me, it's based on meditative space and inner consciousness. That's 'the place' that I'm talking about. It's quite a spiritual idea, I suppose.

Here's my plan of attack: I'm writing some poetic works to link the pieces together, which will involve experimental sounds that reflect the themes. It's a big project that will take quite a bit of time.

So, I'll edit the music videos into arty pieces – there are five tracks so far – and roll out one at a time, each followed up by their experimental linking short films, where the themes are explored in more depth.

I did edit the first video track previously, but I'm going to massively improve on that, as it's important for me to create something inspiring for myself, and hopefully others too.

Quality is the key, here. If I don't love it, then I won't do it. I want to create work I can be proud of.

The Bigger Picture

Now, given this exciting new adventure, I'm also inspired to create other short films, and I have a few other ideas in the making which I'm keen to work on.

What I'm aiming to do is bring all my disparate modes together into single concepts that flow across all my different works. Themes that speak across the various media.

It may take a while for these to unravel, since I've already got a lot of work to do. But I'm fired up to test and experiment with ideas as I go.

Ok. Watch this space. See the world evolve.

Thanks, Shem x