Karen Palmer
Mental Block
About the artist
My practice innovatively fuses the disciplines of the various genres that I work within; documentary, music video, short film and music composition. My documentary experience has taught me how to give the audience exclusive access into a world they would not normally experience. I achieve this through developing trust and respect with my characters, the camera work is intuitively executed, after extensive preparation. My music video training has taught me how to make a bold visual statement. I achieve this through having a strong vision of the mise-en-scene, look, style, energy, and cultivate a dynamic performance. Combined with sharp editing and a strong colour tone in order to create a synergy between the music and visual dynamics. My short film-making practice has taught me the art of storytelling and taking the audience on a journey through a lead character. Finally having worked in music for the past ten years I approach sound and music with a refined level of exploration as I create an industrial musical landscape, through experimenting with music and audio as opposed to passively laying it as a sound bed, it is an active component of the film. I combine these various disciplines to create an edgy language that multicultural youth culture can identify with, and a message that is both authentic and inspirational.
About the work
Mental Block depicts the journey of a young free-runner striving to find his own personal route through life using the discipline of parkour, but all motion stops when he reaches the inevitable mental block. Set within inner-city estates the free-runner discovers that the hardest obstacles to overcome are the ones in his mind. Mental Block is a short film set within the culture of free running that traces the psychological process passed through in order to transcend your fears. I possess unique access and perspective being both (a female) free-runner and filmmaker. I have maintained the integrity and authenticity of the film through my filmmaking practices that fuse the genres of documentary, film and music to vividly replicate this experience. Mental Block will resonate with its young and diverse audience through the accessibility of its fast moving, engaging and concise audio and visual narrative. I have collaborated with Daz-I-Que (for Bugz in the Attic) a contemporary music producer to create a unique soundscape that harnesses some of the industrial sounds of inner city living to represent the protagonist's relentless mental state of mind. The free-runner's journey is to use the environment to develop himself and to always keep moving and not go backwards.
