For those of you who might be interested, here is the scoop on the conceptualization of the film.
Etherferatu: Directors Commentary
In the opening scene, the mood is set. The lights brighten. The candles establish what is to be the beginning of a continuity of the passage of time. The coffin opens, the eye lights up showing the vampire is conscious. It arises from the coffin and turns and begins to stalk the viewer.
The scene cuts to a shot of the moon surrounded by clouds. The cut almost suggests that the vampire has fed on the viewer. The stalk is shot from over the shoulder of the vampire, what I refer to as the second person. The theremin simulates warewolves. As the vampire gets closer to its destination, the filter of the synth opens wider and wider until it is at its peak as the doorbell is rang, the note is the flatted fifth symbolizing doom.
The shot cuts to a farther shot with the vampire framed by the door, the lights inside are on and the shadow of the victim appears in the window. In vampire lore, one must invite the vampire into his home. As the door is opened it cuts to the perspective of the victim and switches back and forth perspectives in a close up, mid close up and extreme close up both the vampire and the victim simulating a silent exchange of intent vs realization.
If you want to look at the seduction of a vampire to its prey from a sexual perspective, then the victim resists the attack by not inviting the vampire in, there is a glass barrier between them that is not opened. The victim gives a defiant gesture of garlic to the vampire which enrages the vampire. The vampires powers increase with the defiance and he dissappears in a puff of smoke.
The resistance to the vampires attack is not sucessful. Superficially, this scene implies that the vampire is resorting to a trick in absence of the sought after treat. Deeper, the burning bag of dog feces symbolizes the burning desire of a vampires bloodlust or from a dfferent perspective, the sexual domination of the predator over the victim. The barrier shielding the victim is removed when the victim emerges from the door to extinguish the flame. Looking at his shoe, the burning ember suggests that he has been violated and that the attack was sucessful and at that realization, the victim feigns defiance, rage, denial, which later culminates as acceptance.
THe shot cuts to the retreating stalk and shows the victim bent over as if to emphisize submission, acceptance comes as he disposes of the evidence. From this point on, everything that happens from the opening scenes reverses itself. The filter closes as the vampire steps away from the house. The stalk looks back towards the moon which is now covered in clouds, suggesting that the vampire flew off into the night, and also reinforces the passage of time.
THe shot returns to the coffin, the vampire descends, reversing all of the sequences, the eye dims, the lid closes and the camera pans to the candles which are now burned down, the camera tilts to the pumpkin, which finishes the reversal of the entirity of the films sequences as the light dims suggesting that the day has come and the vampire sleeps still in darkness.
The score
I tried to approach this as a homage to the German Expressionist silent era director F. W. Murnau. Since Nosferatu was a silent movie, and most copies of the DVD have different scores due to the film being public domain, considering that this was featuring Moog and the Theremin, I tried to think how Wendy Carlos would score the film. I scored it in E Flat minor and used whole steps to signify the steps of the vampire during the stalk. I used the filter to increase the tension and to cue the viewer that the danger was closer. The tempo increased as the moment of seduction reluctance and intensity between the two charachters reaches its peak. Unfortunately, the slight audio clipping on the original master copy was not noticable during the recording process due to the waveshapes and the filter, but once youtube compression occured, this clipping was worsened and pretty much ruined the overall impact of the score and lessened the quality of the film.
The subject matter
I chose the vampire because I immediately knew that I was going to dress the theremin up, and as a child, the vampire was my most frequent and favorite costume to wear. I was also a fan of the Anne Rice vampire chronicles. Once I saw the theremin dressed in the material I knew that instead of doing Dracula or Nosferatu I would be doing something closer to Mel Brook’s treatment of this genre of films. The voice was overdubbed and was a reference to Vincent Price even containing a reference to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I was very bothered by the loss of Jackson and as a tribute to him I put that line (“To terrorize yalls neighborhood”) in.
I treated the Theremin as if it were a puppet and the emergence scene was the only way that I could get it to arise from the coffin without me being in the shot. When the filming was done and I referred to youtube clips of Nosferatu for an idea of the score, when I saw him energe from the coffin the exact same way as the theremin, that was totally cooincidence. I did not intend to exactly emulate that. At the time of shooting I had only seen Nosferatu once, several years ago and only a part of it.
I hope you enjoyed the film. It will probably be my last, as the amount of work that goes into a project like this is extreme. Id like to thank my wife for helping me with the shots, and putting up with me for 4 days with little sleep or food until the film was submitted.
Thank you for your interest. You can watch the film on youtube following the link in my signature.
Eric