So, Mark Walker, mmm..., what? You never heard of him? Well, I guess is not that famous, at least not yet. Nonetheless, the idea of talking about him is just to change that by introducing and presenting some of his most recent work. So, how did I come to know this buddy? I guess that’s quite strange and funny to explain. The next is not a joke, but somehow I often manage to get to interesting places and finding brand new stuff just for lucky, or let’s say curiosity...you know, when one thing leads to another and so on.
Mark Walker was born in 1976 in Nottinghamshire, England. He studied as a painter and sculptor at the University Of Wales. Nevertheless, and maybe just for curiosity he began experimenting with film, performance and installation art. In 2003 Mark graduated from the Fiction Direction MA course at the National Film and Television School.
His first film (Short Film) was called “Sea Monster” and was screened in competition at numerous festivals. In keeping with this, short film was the nominated in the Best Short Film category at the 2004 BAFTA awards. In addition, “Sea Monster” won Best Director at the International Henri Langlois festival. Any novel film director would like to start his career that way, wouldn’t they?
The video is called “The Doll” and is a short film made for boutique lingerie label “Lascivious” in 2007, by the Image Company Wyld Stallyons (Rich Stallyon, Chris Stallyon). Now, let’s guess who is working within the team work members of the company? Yes, that’s right, Mark Walker.The short film is about death, desire, robots and of course lingerie, because I believe the film’s main objective is to promote Lascivious lingerie. According to the work team of Wyld Stallyons the film was inspired by “The Infamous Real Doll sex toys” (something related to old Greek myths; idea projected in the film) and countless evenings watching “straight-to-video sci-fi b-movies of dubious quality”. At this point is important to remark Walker’s influence on the short film, for Mark himself is a fan of Sci/fi films, main genre assignable to the video. Amongst the Film Directors and movies Mark likes we can find David Cronenberg films, such as “Dead Ringers”, Jean-luc Godard’s “Alphaville” and various other Sci/fi, Horror films, which in part might explain the use of blood and violence within the short’s idea of desire and death.
In plain words, the video takes about four minutes, but believe me when I say that those four minutes are enough to take you out of your sit and trigger off a series of ideas within your mind, forcing you to replay the video two or three times. I kinda think that aside of the awesome aesthetical visual work, the music plays also a central role. In fact, it is no other than the music which is capable, along with the image, to reach the dark aura the image pretend by itself. I guess is pointless to point out which one is more important, but since cinema is first image and then sound, I wanted to remark how important is the music-work in this particular case.I wish I could have found something else of Mark Walker’s work, but since he is just merging into this field, I guess is not that easy to find something. Nevertheless, If were to found something later, be sure I will post something about it.
Before the end, I give you the original video “The Doll”, which is very hard to find these days, for it was removed from youtube and other places, I don’t know the reason why, but its been disappearing from every site I’ve visited. (Thanks God I stole it on time). Besides, I’m adding not only the original vid, but the “making of”, that has been pop in youtube by a “BUENA ONDA” user. So check both. That’s it, now let’s get the hell out of here.
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[1] Cinema Extreme was created in 2002 by the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund and Film4 to seek out and develop filmmakers with a distinctive directorial voice and cinematic flair. They appointed The Bureau to manage the scheme.
(Read More in: http://www.thebureau.co.uk/schevents/fr_schemes.html)
THE DOLL
THE MAKING OF
