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Psychedelic Imagery

Besides the usage of random bright colors, and things morphing (ie. a clock melting), does anyone have any suggestions or ideas for getting really trippy, psychedelic imagery into a movie? I'm trying to figure out, not really hippie-ish, but more how to make a very surreal experience for my film.

All suggestions/ideas would be appreciated.
 
...maybe you could find a lava lamp and figure out how to shoot it, taking care of your camera first of course....

...I'm not so sure about the technological part, but surreal can come from unconnected imagery. things that don't match, like...clowns anywhere but at a circus. There are paintings of dogs in business suits...and then there is that artist who paints businessmen with green apples in front of their faces...

...that doesn't really help with the 60's, much, but you get the idea....

--spinner :cool:
 
Edit your sound so it appears "distant and disconected" if you know what I mean (can't think of the proper terminology at the moment).

Lava lamp is an interesting idea. You might zoom in and shoot a close up of just the goo moving around in the lamp and then use that as a displacement map for the footage. Could cause a neat effect.
 
Thanks for the suggestions :)

(sorry for the delayed response, I posted the topic from friend's house and when I came home I found out someone was playing around with my internet settings so I had to figure out the WEP key again...)

That Lava Lamp technique really does sound interesting. I think I'll try to play around with that one. And the music/sound stuff too.
 
Are you shooting film? Consider cross-processing and hand-processing options. I've processed old expired 7293 with C41 chemistry and gotten some wild nonrealistic colors; also you can wack out the colors of any film (even b&w) during the telecine transfer step if your telecine operator is willing to play along.

If you're shooting video, you can run the image through an older analog switcher/efx generator and modify the color, saturation, etc in real time to your heart's content, i.e. old Dr. Who's or Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" videos.
 
The use of a lot of wide angle lens with the camera set close,low and even at odd Dutch tilt agles can add a sureal effect.A lot depends on how subtle you want to be.The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari used strange backdrops.Door frames are trapazoidal or parrallogram instead of rectangular.You didn't specify whther you are shooting video or film,but if film,the cross process of reversal film might be cool.Also shooting reversal film and processing normal will give you some bizarre results."Buffalo '66" was shot on reversal.Intentionally breaking rules like the axis can send a subtle message that something's not right,although you have to really careful with that one and be really subtle with it.Otherwise it will just look sloppy.Kubrick has done this a few times,The Shining comes to mind.Unmotivated light at odd angles,shadows that don't belong and odd colored gels may work for you.I'm reminded of some of the shots in "Event Horizon" where they used some really noxious looking green light in places.
 
I'm not really familiar with the technical terminology. I'm not sure what we're filming with yet but we are going for that bizaare, something's not right feel.
 
Zandt said:
I'm not really familiar with the technical terminology. I'm not sure what we're filming with yet but we are going for that bizaare, something's not right feel.



If you have any questions about terminolgy used,send me a private message and I will be happy to explain.
 
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