Meditation Exercise - Project Proposal: 'White Rabbit'

In our session we were asked to lay on the floor and partake in a meditation exercise to help us visualise an uncanny scenario.  Afterwards we wrote down what we had envisaged.

As I went through the various stages of the relaxation exercise I had a few different images and scenarios.  Sometimes it wasn't a clear picture, just a detail, for example I seemed to have a vision of the caps that soldiers of the French Foreign Legion wear when they are depicted in old movies.  I didn't imagine a scenario, or even a tableau, just pictured the cap!  After this I imagined a sand dune in a desert.  The sand blows in a wind and an object is revealed under the sand.  I don't know what the object is, I had lost the image by then.

Once I was relaxed I had a very clear scenario which came to mind which I think is a very uncanny scene.  It was very clear and I tried to describe it accurately when I wrote it up:

Live rabbit shedding fur to reveal it has the skeleton of a bird, which then flies away. (Ray Harryhausen-esque.)

Meditation Exercise - 'White Rabbit'

This is exactly as I wrote it in the exercise:

A white rabbit (alive) walking around.

Sterile, lab conditions.
Height grid / chart etc
Scientific exercise

Starts losing it's fur, patchy
skin showing through

As fur falls out, skin begins to dissolve, bones show through

When all fur and skin is gone, skeleton that is left behind is that of a bird

Beak was pointy nose
Wings = front legs
Legs = back legs
Tail = bobtail

Skeleton moves,

flies away

Sound - soft shuffle of rabbit
No voices
No humans around
No music

Could be CCTV at stages

Cracking, bone crunching sound for bird skeleton flapping and flying off.

Bright lights, lab conditions, scientific study.
Darwin theory.

....................................

I think I managed to describe the scene quite well in my writing.

I'm not entirely sure where I dreamed this scenario up from.  I love Ray Harryhausen's work.  I went to the Haryhausen exhibition at the London Film Museum a couple of years ago and was fascinated by the detail in his models and the vast difference in scale.  Like Ron Mueck (whose work I also love and am fascinated by) Harryhausen's models range from very small intricate works to twelve foot creatures.

Harryhausen and skeleton

I like the animated skeletons of Harryhausen as used in the film Jason and the Argonauts, and can imagine how the skeleton of the bird in my scenario could be achieved: with a model, stop motion animation and a lot of patience!

I am less sure about how we could achieve the malting and decaying live rabbit effect.  I presume that we would have to use another model.

Harryhausen and model of Pegasus (creature with fur)

If the rabbit appeared to die first, it would be easier*.  Then we could use a model and not have to create the effect of it still moving around as it sheds, but that isn't the image that I had in my head.       

*At this point I have visions of the decaying swan and other animals (and the twins in the final scene) in Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts.  In fact, it might be because there is a still from A Zed and Two Noughts on the cover of the module guide that I printed off for my module journal that I had decaying animals in mind when we did the meditation exercise.  That would explain the grid / measuring chart lab condition too.

How that evolved into a white rabbit having a bird's skeleton which comes back to life and flies off, I'm not sure!

This could be a good time to confess that Peter Greenaway is an absolute hero of mine.  I attended the 'Cinema is Dead' lecture that he gave at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the way he describes his visual ideas and how he would present them are fascinating.  Along with Derek Jarman and Lars Von Trier,  Peter Greenaway is one of my favourite directors. 
 

A Zed and Two Noughts

Below are some more images that I have sought out online which will help to create a visual idea of what I imagine the scene to be like:

Measuring grids used for monitoring decaying bodies in A Zed and Two Noughts:
 

White rabbits:

 

Rabbit skeletons (and artistic variations thereof..!)

Bird skeleton:

From these I started to build a moodboard:

Actually, in looking for pictures to start creating a moodboard I searched for 'lab conditions' and 'animal lab' and this led me to a google page 'animal testing on rabbits' and it's really upset me.

I love animals and don't like to see them in distress.

While I was thinking of the scene I pictured it as an interesting, fantasy film Harryhausen-esque type of metamorphosis.  The uncanny bit of the film would be that the rabbit had a bird's skeleton that comes back to life.  I don't want it to be distressing or upsetting.