Best Before End

An experimental art film representing the perception of supermarket products, specifically regarding the morals of meat.

In depth: The viewer journeys through the supermarket. Real-time and speeded shots of a supermarket are shown through the thoughts of a customer as they shop, the speed reflecting one's mental thoughts when shopping at a supermarket, mentally blocking parts and putting a lot of thought into others. Conversations can vaguely be heard in the background, but not fully understood, as is common with background conversation in supermarkets. The viewer reaches the checkout in the middle of the video, rather than the end- this is because the buying of the products is not the climax, but the meat display is, which is why it is shown after the checkout. The point of this is that people never think about 'meat'. They just pass it, when really there are limbless/cut up corpses bundled onto shelves and people just ignore this horrific fact because they're so used to it.
There are references to River Phoenix in ambiguous clips of news reports informing of his death following the shots of the meat. More obviously, this is because of his values concerning animal rights, but also to suggest that while so much emphasis is put on the death of a human, the millions of dead animals on the shelves aren't even considered for a second, but rather eaten or thrown away. At the end of the film, a shot of an opening refrigerator is shown, as if to say 'now, after watching that, think about what's in your fridge'.
The style of the video is inspired by old television, specifically in 1993, which is when the news broadcasts are from. To make the supermarket clips seem slightly grainy and of vapid lighting, like in the news reports, I uploaded them to a computer and then recorded them again from there. The static television sounds were recorded from a radio and the background conversations were recorded in a supermarket.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• supermarket
• best
• before
• end
• river
• phoenix

[paramedic51]

Wow! This film fascinated me! Great work!

[Pevalwen]

@paramedic51 Thank you! That means a lot.

[NortonCapsuleson]

It is very unsettling. Not sure if I ever want to go to Lidl again.

[Pevalwen]

@NortonCapsuleson It's Aldi ;)

[paramedic51]

@Pevalwen Found it through your post on Across the Way....Its really awesome! :)