Exscindo Mortalitas
Behind
the Scenes
Concept
Given the Easter theme
requirement of the film festival for which this film was made, I originally
thought about depicting the earthly resurrection of Jesus on the first Easter
Sunday morning some 1,977 years ago. But
of course, that’s been done before in countless movies about the life of Jesus
and had a possibility of appearing in a number of other entries. So as I pondered theological questions like “Where
was Jesus’ Spirit while his body was in the tomb?” I stumbled upon the idea of trying
to depict the moments right before Jesus’ earthly
resurrection, namely, where he defeated death in the spirit realm. I do not claim that my depiction of these
moments (Jesus escaping the bounds in Hades) would stand up well to any
theological scrutiny, but there is an obscure verse in the New Testament (First
Peter, chapter 3) that speaks of Jesus going and preaching to the “spirits in
prison” which could be a reference to Hades.
So just as the tomb of Jesus was guarded by a
company of soldiers on earth, a holding cell of Jesus in Hades could have been guarded
by demonic beings. And just as angels
rolled away the stone for Jesus to exit the tomb, angels could have also been
involved in assisting in freeing Jesus from Hades.
Set
The set was designed around the
functionality of the jail doors (which came from the Jabba’s
Palace LEGO set). I had bought a Pirates
of the Caribbean Mega Bloks set because it was on sale,
and ended up using one of it’s base pieces on one side of the jail tower. That same set came with a pretty good
assortment of stone-looking dark gray bricks which became the primary material
for the tower. Needing more of those
kinds of bricks, I bought two more of the same exact set. These also provided me with another black
rocky base to use on the other side of the tower. The height of the tower was a function of how
many of these bricks I had. But when I
began filming, I had to remove the top two stories so that the tower would fit
under then spot-lighting rig that hung above.
The trees were also from Mega Blok sets (Narnia
sets).
|
All six stories. |
From above. |
Thanks for watching,
Ancient Bricks