On the Rebound.

New narrative idea: Cult Promo Video?
 Continuing with our ideas of obsession and being controlled, we've been toying with the idea of a new narrative surrounding cults and dangerous religious sects. Our current idea is something along the lines of a promotional video, almost advertising the cult - something like the Scientology video I've embedded below except with a more sinister and eerie edge. Half way the tape would cut to a girl being held captive in the exact same room the promo video is filmed in, bruised and smeared in blood, and the tape would then cut again to an image of the cult's symbol written in blood on the wall, assumedly hers. The promo video would then continue, hopefully more sinister and eerie than before knowing the true nature of the cult and a series of shots will follow - random, disorienting images sharply edited, almost like a brainwashing video.

Scientology Commercial:

We're leaving you, Lo.

We've decided to part ways with the idea of our Lolita narrative.
Y'know, it was fun while it lasted but there was just too many foreseeable issues we just couldn't see a solution too.

• The main one being copyright laws, and we mere students quite blatantly can't afford the incredibly costly rights to reproduce Nabokov's novel. We also felt attempting to reproduce the narrative but under a different name would look just exactly like that - some students attempting to reproduce Lolita under a different name, and quite possibly not as well as the first two remakes anyway.
• We also felt actors was an issue for concern. Finding a convincing thirteen year old female actress who was versatile enough to portray overt flirtatiousness and believable distress and fear would've been hard enough, but finding a forty year old male actor who would be willing to portray a paedophile seemed like an even harder task.

So farewell Lolita.
It's wasn't us, it was actually you.

Lo. Lee. Ta.

This summer I've been reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - admittedly a slightly obscure beach read, but the ultimate tale of fixation and infatuation, bordering into our own narrative ideas of stalking and obsession. Set in the present day I feel Lolita would've been an entirely different story - whereas child molestation in the Fifties was something grossly under reported, and purposely hushed up if revealed in that typically 1950s manner that induced panic at the thought of a tarnish to their social standing or idyllic family reputation, today paedophilia is perhaps the only social taboo left, in some cases inducing something of witch hunts in the general public, repulsed and disgusted by the thought of child exploitation. In the Fifties I feel it would've been easier for a paedophile to have operated unnoticed, taking on the guise, as Humbert Humbert did, of a dedicated and overprotective parent, whereas today it is drilled into our children's minds to speak out against abuse, and is made resolutely clear where help is available through massive police and government campaigns - this could, of course, be extremely naive of me, and is not to undermine the control and manipulation the paedophile would exercise over their victim in ke eping them quiet.

I also feel I am only interpreting the novel on a very superficial level, that this is simply a story of a basic paedophile but Humbert himself is a compassionate man - his struggle with his desire for Lolita is long and agonized and extremely contemplative and though his desires for Lolita are made clear and detailed graphically, there is nothing in the first few chapters to suggest he will act on these desires. Lolita does also appear to be something of a willing candidate - a flirtatious and provocative young 'nymphet,' though the reader can tell in her mind this is simply a girlish game toying with her new found sexuality - something if exercised with another more morale male adult that would've been brushed aside, and it is undeniable she is exploited by Humbert and unfairly stripped of her childhood. I feel Humbert's only saving grace - not that he deserves one as he is essentially a perverse and weak man - is that he is genuinely in love with Lolita and so passionately and intensely so, that he eventually destroys himself with it.

After reading the book I ventured further to watch Stanley Kubrick's version of it, and excerpts of the Adrian Lyne 1997 version too and I must admit I am quite fascinated with the narrative and its translations to screen. I think it could be a really interesting narrative for our trailer - because the actual book is written in first person, we aren't sure of the reliability of the narration and I think it could be something of shocking to show Humbert's interpretation of her actions and her actual feelings - I was visualizing lots of close ups, particularly of her lips, whispering seductively one of the book's lines - 'I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you,' and then cutting to her crying for help, maybe even screaming, and another of her sucking on that iconic heart lollipop. I also think setting it in modern day could leave us room to experiment with today's reaction to paedophilia - we could include close ups of strangers repulsed, building up a voiceover of their insults, then layered over lines from the other characters - I'm thinking Lolita's mum when she screams thats he's a monster, etc. then layered again against his diaries entries, a faint whispering in the background, detailing her constant movements quoted from the book and then the whole thing simmering down to simply him chanting 'Lolita' to symbolize his complete obsession of her.