Moloch- Produktionsdesign für einen Charakter

For the master-graduate-film “Moloch” I was assigned the charakter-, set-, and costumedesign for “the prophet”, one of four characters in the movie, which I worked on together with the head of artdirection Lilliana Tchourlina, and the director of the movie Michelle Klösch. As an addition I was the assistant for the setdesign of “the journalist”, being filmed a few days before “the prophet”.

The Character

The character of the prophet is associated with a number of connotations. Being cast away from the inhabitants of the city referred to as “moloch”, and drawn to live in the underground, she is a mixture of naïve, childlike characteristics, as having to escape from the top during her childhood, and of wise and knowing, prophetic features. She relies on the character of “the painter” for the inspiration of her prophecies, as the creative excess of the paintings he unknowingly chucks down the waste-pipe directly onto her asylum, which is situated underneath an accumulation of pipes, seem to work as maps of meaning.

The Set

The pipe-accumulation which the prophet has chosen to be her asylum and place of comfort, is hinting to an accumulation of civilization at the other side of the pipes. For the prophet this is her connection to the top world, and a place of inspiration for her prophecies giving her hope. She feels it to be her task and determination to free “the mass”, which the inhabitants of the moloch are generally referred to, and attempts that by spreading her prophecies through pipes, so she doesn’t have to go to the top. Her camp is in a suitcase, symbolizing her nervous imagination of being able to escape anytime.

The Costume

Her costume refers to her childhood, and still intact fantasy-imagination of being a fish, an underground creature, accepting the underground as natural environment. Fish-elements can be found in her top, which is spread with fish-scale like elements, and a swimming web underneath her armpit. Her transformation in the fantasy-fish creature is complete, when she has to leave her asylum to “swim” through the tunnels of the underground and fulfill her determination of spreading the message.