The Castling

The Film:

Kasia Kwiecinska and I created this short film for an architectural research project. It is about how a simple house can turn into a chess academy.
Special thanks to the KwaThema Chess Academy for all their help.

The Castiling

Creating a time map for research and relating it into a film is much harder than I imagined. Many things emerge, what part of the story will we tell, from who's viewpoint will it be from and what media would best represent it.
For example, with regards to ERGO and the time that Anthony worked there:

What Story:
Portraying the ritual of going to work
The hundreds of people from KwaThema that worked at ERGO
How Anthony rose up the employment ladder from attendant to Snr operator.
Who's Viewpoint:

Anthony, viewed from his eyes (this could quite possibly even become literal, using his eye as the frame)

From ERGO's eyes
From an impartial viewer (such as a bird in the sky)
What Media:
A pure film format would be unrealistic, as a reconstruction would be beyond our means. For such a story a collaged animation would seem the most appropriate choice. Using photographs, sound, 3d animation, hand drawn animation and photoshop editing will create a highly layered piece. The graphic style could lend the hard industrial quality of ERGO.

The preliminary result, text storyboard:
Ergo in the distance in a photoshoped surreal format, moving parts and smoke sets back ERGO into when it was still in production. Workers stream into the factory, in perspective (These workers could be hand drawn).
The process ERGO undergoes could be shown with a highly complex 3d flyover of the processes showing the mine dumps with their shimmering aqua blue water and the pipes that transport the sludge to ERGO, this scene could be very graphically appealing.

Mixed Narrative - Eduardo

Working on the KwaThema research project has opened my eyes to all the new possibilities of architecture and its growth.
It has become clear in our research that one cannot separate architecture and narrative. Every built outcome is a result of a story, every change means the possible inclusion of new characters, this is not merely a tree-shaped system, but quickly forms a network that is so intricate that one needs to act like an investigator to try and find the clues that best reveal the network.
Working with Anthonly that the chess park has meant an avalanche h of links, people, history and economy flooding towards us. I hope that we have set the right filters in place in order to make sense of this information.