Dream Reel (2015)
Written, Directed and Edited by Samuel Barnes
Produced by Jackson Devereux

Official Selection - ABC iView Grad Season 2017
Official Selection - International Festival Signes de Nuit 2016
Winner Audience Award - International Festival Signes de Nuit Bangkok 2016

The inspiration for Dream Reel stemmed from a childhood fascination with dreams. One of my earliest memories, in fact, was a dream I still remember vividly. I was simply sitting down eating some mashed potatoes and suddenly the pile of mash grew a mouth and started to talk to me. As I grew older I became more intrigued by the surreal dreamscapes I would experience in sleep and what their meaning may be. By chance, while developing my thesis film at university, a friend told me in great detail of a dream in which he had dinner with a strange cult and ended up signing away his soul. His dream would instantly inspire the concept behind my film. I set out to listen to and document as many of my close friends’ absurd dreams as possible from which provided the foundation of the script.

When creating Dream Reel, I wanted was to explore the ambiguity of each dream sequence and their capacity to enhance the depth of each character. Thematically, by visualising the absurd, symbolism becomes the premier means of communication with the viewer, forming stories about the characters that are both unreal and real and revealing their psyches; their fears, desires, their past/future and what lies beyond their understanding of their self.

And yet, while we seek to find concrete meaning within the absurdity of each dream, it is the lack of definition that kindles an eloquent beauty.

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