“It could have been you.
Adrift in a leaking boat
huddled together with the dead and the dying
The only one alive
It could have been you
trying to escape
trying to survive
desperately clinging on to a false hope
It could have been you
whose infant child
is – like you
condemned to a watery grave
It could have been you
in fact
It is.”

To finish a creative project like this feels as if a great weight has been lifted off your shoulders and at the same time as if your long time girlfriend that you love passionately has just left you!

Its a feeling of complete opposites. On one hand the feeling of having taken it from the spark of creative thoughts through to finished and “out of your hands” project is a wonderful feeling but the fact that you have spend a lot of time thinking, feeling, nurturing, talking, explaining, working, re-working, struggling, cursing, negotiating, project managing, location scouting, hoping, directing, despairing, filming, loving, editing, colour grading, exporting, uploading, writing about, twittering and more makes it somewhat of an emotional roller coaster. But then if it isnt – it might not be worth doing in the first place!

Wreckage of dreams – is the title of a script and piece of music from the ENO Mini Opera competition. (http://www.minioperas.org/) 1 month ago I stumbled upon the website by chance.

I have tried entering the Big Dance competition before, but was unsuccessful in being among the finalists. I like the way that different media like dance and now opera tries to crossover and into film or short films in order to try and challenge both art forms in to a third and exciting format. Its not a new idea but as far as I know the idea of making it available to the public as a competition is new. As the base for the Mini Opera short film I had to chose between 10 soundtrack finalists. Each had to have a base in 10 script finalists where they could use all of, some of, or a just a fraction of the script as inspiration for the music. I went through them one by one but for me they all sounded rather like traditional opera.

I was looking for something what would have a more filmic sense and would leap out at me. I see everything in images and I am always looking for that inner film to start and the ideas to start flowing. When I heard Riz Maslen’s Wreckage of a Dream i knew I had the soundtrack I wanted.

Riz’s haunting music and soundscape transported me directly into the sea. It captured my imagination right away. crashing waves, wind and a single soft high note gliding above the clouds – this captured my heart instantaneously. http://www.minioperas.org/composer/wreckage-of-dreams-2/

The music is based on the script of Shaun Gardiner about a group of boat refugees trying to survive. Shaun struck upon a line in the original story from Niel Gaiman (http://www.minioperas.org/?stories=the-sweeper-of-dreams) – who wrote one of the original short stories that they used as a base for the script writing competition.

The lines where “they are the ones who live, each day, in the wreckage of their dream”

It’s all about the despair and heartbreak and fear of death that surrounds the desperate action of desperate people trying to reach a better future and escaping a bitter life, but also about the failing of our modern society in helping people in the utmost need as Nato boat sees them but remains heartbreakingly impartial. The idea was to create a 6-7 min short film telling the story of a young couple and their infant child of un-descriptive racial background, as I feel that if the world has been but a different one it could have been you and me in a small leaking boat trying to survive.

As the couple struggles to survive a siren appears unseen to sing to them. First He slips into a coma from the lack of water and food. She is left alone with her child. After a desperate fight to stay in the boat the waves capsizes the boat spilling all three into the black sea for a final struggle in which she desperately tries to save her child by placing it on the upturned boat.

In closing the siren picks up the child and as she sings to it they both vanishes back into the sea.
I wanted the short to have a theatrical sense so it could be transferred and scaled up unto a theater or opera stage. The idea was not use an approach that would somewhat mimic an opera production and not use too many film effects and practices .
The fact that you can sometimes see the people creating the waves though the fabric only adds to the idea that this is not “just a play”

These are not just actors playing a part but real people who are going through hell.

Sometimes its better to make it stand out boldly in order to make it standout less.

The final short film was shot in a grassy field, with 3 x 8 meter strips of cloth as waves/backdrop, an old used boat from the local sailing club and a handful of my brilliant friends acting as waves and a handful of homemade sandwiches. We shot the film in 6 hours during the daytime on the Canon 5D mk2 using a 24-70mm 2.8 and a 50mm 1.4 all sigma lenses. An important thought about making this film has been that without great friends and collaborations, who are willing to give you their most precious thing – their time, it wouldn’t be impossible for me to do what I like best.

Creating something that didn’t exist before. And for that its worth I would do it all again. And I will.

Wreckage of Dreams
A film by Mikael Jaeger Jensen
Music by Riz Maslent
Based on a story by Neil Gaiman and script by Shaun Gardiner
—
Concept, directing, filming & editing : Mikael Jaeger Jensen
Her : Juliana Yazbeck
Him : Pierre Buf
Siren : Tugba Tamer
1st Ad : Ashley Vanderford
Waves : Vendredi Noir, John Conaghan, Justina Kochansky