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Video

The Northern Void video is divided into 3 parts:

Part 1 - 2013 AD - the Present.
The Plenty Rd. strip is utterly empty (shot well early on Sunday morning). Its locales are devoid of all life. No people appear anywhere, as if all the city's inhabitants have died. Bereft of any social presence, the buildings are like tombstones. Their haphazard architecture, their attempts at customised frontage, their desperation to attract business - all this and more is potently felt in the depiction of their emptiness.

Part 2 - 2085 AD - the Future.
The Plenty Rd. strip appears similar but aged. The building's abject surfaces remain as ugly as ever; they have not gathered any charm. People are dotted here and there. They are jaundiced, drained, ill. Clutches, callipers, wheelchairs - hardly any can walk. Some wait at tram stops for transport that will never come. Others lean against poles and shop fronts, frozen by lack of will. Bandages ineffectually cover strange sores. Some are dead already. Most are dying. Some stare into the distance. Others look right through us.

Part 3 - 3079 - the post-Future.
The Plenty Rd. strip has now atrophied, calcified and fossilised into desolate structures. All facades have disappeared. Frontages have caved in. Their interiors are exposed like robbed graves. Strange figures appear hovering and darting about. This is a ghost town, peopled by ectoplasmic entities. Once business owners and clientele with no other purpose or function, they now float aimlessly, returning to the only zone they ever called home.

The three part structure of the Northern Void video is a sardonic reference to the classical '3 act structure' which modern cinema has had administered to its dying corpus by 'script doctors'. Similarly referential is the idea of 'the Northern suburbs'. Growing up in Reservoir, Philip Brophy has long perceived the North not as a heroic plateau of the common folk, but as a desolate plain of terse anonymity. Once a moderately violent zone at the outer ring of 70s skinhead violence (bordering on the 'far North' of Italian immigrant settlements in Lalor, Thomastown and Epping), Reservoir and Preston was supposedly 'saved' by the wonder of Northland in 1970. With its own Myers, this tacky sideshow of urbanity - like all utopian shopping centres - typified the numbing nothingness that would continue to posit shopping as a meaningful act. Back then, Northland was the future. Northern Void extends this vision of a future.

The production of Northern Void was divided into two phases: a small location crew shooting and assembling documented material of the various locales along Plenty Rd.; and a larger crew assembled in a studio shooting performers against green-screen. In post-production, the performers were matched to and composited into the location backgrounds. Further processing and effecting is most evident in Parts 2 & 3 where digital effects post-production transforms the buildings and generates the ghost-like effects of the performers.

Sound

The soundtrack for Northern Void capitalises upon and extends Ph2's working practices. These are largely based around field recordings and captured textures which are then processed and multi-layered into dense fields of sound. Sometimes carved and sculptured into monolithic forms, other times distilled into near-silent aural quivers, the sonic investigations of Ph2 heighten the act of listening.

As part of the development of Northern Void, various location recordings have been assembled and then workshopped through a series of improvisations. These segments and passages have then been matched and shaped according to the visuals of Northern Void as they were being produced.

With the visuals complete, work concentrated on articulating the dramatic momentum and arcs within the three parts. This involves extensive experimentation to uncover the most innovative yet involving way of reflecting and intensifying the subtextual nuances of how the onscreen landscapes and locations are being transformed across time.

Audiovision

Northern Void visually merges the hyper-banality of western urban peripheries with a foreboding quasi-futurism. Evoking the 'failed futurism' of European cinema (especially the now-retro appeal of 50s Russian sci-fi) with the suburban dystopia depicted in many Japanese manga (comics), Northern Void paints the future Western landscape as mired in an all-too familiar present. The soundtrack constructed and performed focuses on the psychological dimension of being stranded in this timeless, stateless zone. Musically mirroring its dispossessed denizens, it follows the wonderfully non-judgemental tone of many art film soundtracks from the 60s and 70s. Expanses of natural semi-industrial sounds are merged with digital and synthetic tonings that suggest nature has been eroded and re-coded into a new realm whose atmosphere will be far from welcoming.

Credits

Script & Direction	Philip Brophy
Score/Sound-Design	Ph2 (Philip Brophy & Philip Samartzis)
Project Management/Production	Keely Macarow
Studio Cinematography	Michael Williams
Principal Lighting Assistance	Rocco Fosano
On-set Compositing	Pancho Colladetti
Location Camerawork	Philip Brophy
Location Assistance	Philip Samartzis, Joel Morrison
Stills Photography	Pancho Colladetti
Hair & Make-up	Nickie Hanley
Costumes & Dressing	Holly-Anne Buck, Cassandra Tytler
Studio	Premiere Lighting
Post-production FX & Editing	Philip Brophy
Post-Production Mattes	Pancho Colladetti
Compositing Assistance	Takuya Katsu, Claire Slattery
Recording, Production & Mix	Philip Brophy & Philip Samartzis
Studios	Gelatin and Bee Hive
Additional Location Recording	Madelyne Cornish
Drums	Philip Brophy
Trumpet & Recorder	Isobel Knowles
Trombone	Gus Franklin
Technical Advice	Dominic Redfern, Phip Murray, Isobel Knowles
Flyer design	Darcy Long
Marketing & Publicity	Rafaela Pandolfini
Cast	Sam Acres, Carl Anderson, Nat Bates, Pas Battista, Nigel Brown, Holly-Anne Buck, Anthea Caddy, Rebecca Cannon, Benjamin Ducroz, Gus Franklin, Lily Hibberd, Maddy Hodge, Isobel Knowles, Brendan Lee, Simon Maidment, Kristina Matovic, Adam Milburn, Phil Pietrushka, Engel Schmidl, Thembi Soddell, George Stajsic, Cassandra Tytler
Support	City of Melbourne (Candy Mitchell); Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Kristine Bugeja, Alex Taylor, Helen Simondson, Andre Bernard); Film Victoria (Blythe Chandler, Shiralee Saul, Amelia King); Arts Victoria (Amanda Browne); RMIT University (Elizabeth Grierson); Australian Film Commission (Joseph Alessi); New Media Arts Fellowship (Australia Council)
Thanks	Alexei Borisov (The Dom Cultural Center); The Australian Embassy in Moscow; Stuart Brown (British Film Institute); Marcel Ollerenshaw (Serious); Steven Ball (Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design); John Levack Drever (Goldsmiths College, University of London); David Toop; Claire Stewart; Val & Eric Macarow; Stephen Macarow; Pierre Macarow Rodgers; Ande Bunbury; Mica Nakayama

BUY Northern Void directly through Sound Punch Records online using PayPal from October 2008.

Complete contents of this page © Philip Brophy