White

This came as an idea after attending a research seminar at the University of Coventry yesterday under the auspices of the Family Ties Network, with whom I now appear to be affiliated.

The notional framework for the event was “The Transnational Family” and much of the presentation from the various speakers was around “family albums”. I don’t plan to detail the various speakers works – nor my responses to them, as it was the ideas that sprang from discussions and chats at the seminar that have fuelled some inspirations, not least the video above.

The still image has been with me since I first collected it from a friend from their family album, my father destroyed our family album decades ago, and I am in the process of constructing a family album in the absence of any contemporaneous familial photographs. And of course they become fictive constructions clawed from my memory. If I am to take this an idea any further in this course I will have to find more ways to express any feelings about memory.

Doris video

I suppose it happens to most people on a course at some stage, the “what the heck am I doing this course for?” kind of moment. Perhaps more usually a significantly further distance travelled than I have achieved at this point.

I’m fairly sure at this stage that I’m not backing away from the course, more wondering how to make the course make sense for me. My tutor, on my first post-assignment tutorial, calibrated how I should approach the course, reminding me that I have already graduated and this is therefore, to some extent, a post graduate course and that, as agreed I should take much more control of the assignment briefs to develop my voice.  And so I made some decisions…

I decided to reign-in the technical frivolities in place of trying to get the formal technicalities – as much as I am in control of them at this stage – to serve what I hoped would be the narrative. I selected a text and re-wrote it to “embroider” the visual from a single actor, first person narrative on the notion of memory, to a “two-hander” reflective. The presentation would be largely a simple fixed camera position, deflecting the viewer’s attention away from the presentation (and it’s limitations) and more directly on the narrative. I didn’t seek to explain who the actors were, nor their relationship to each-other. I constructed my first film script after finding out what I imagine a lot of film scripts look like – a helpful set of course notes provided direction to that end. I planned the shots, planned the time of day, recruited the players, shot plenty of footage, safety footage and rehearsed the players. I made an edit and it did largely what I had hoped it would do.

Upon completing the edit I showed it to a couple of people and asked for critique. And it was that feedback which has made me consider what I am doing, or perhaps what I am not doing that I should consider doing in a different way.

I found plenty of justifications for my decision making, perhaps largely because the decisions I made were for certain reasons and the video seems to have largely justified those decisions. That’s not to say that the formal qualities of the video are anything but still rather stilted – clearly there is a long way to go before my skill set with video can be described as competent. However that’s not really my concern at this stage – if it were I would not be concerned.

The feedback from one student brought me rather abruptly to recognize that, just as my tutor described, I have an opportunity to develop my practice, experiment with my voice and I am, despite some improving technical and formal qualities, not doing so.

Fellow student Sarah-Jane Field suggested I look at Maya Deren’s work and looking at it I can see much of what I think my work might develop to (into). There is a lot, of course, I need to develop in core skills, the formalities of the medium, but I also need to try and free myself from self-imposed limitations – whether they are psychologically imposed or otherwise – to create work that better describes how I can describe how I feel about what it is I want to make work about.

This latest video therefore will not be developed any further, it has served as a milestone from a very short journey so far, and hopefully it will signpost more clearly the way to go.

Please contact me if you would like to view the video and I will send you a password.

Doris prep’

The time taken to consider work undertaken, make more work and then plan is a culture shock in this course. As a photography student, as an artist, as an enthusiast for the medium I could pick up my camera and add to the work. Maybe this was a limitation, this seeming casualness for making work; maybe it was core component of the medium that allowed it to be so, nevertheless the structural difference is one that I need to come to terms with. The availability of people who are prepared to give their time to my projects has to be the limiting factor as, conceptually, their absence in a work about memory is not something that I can construct a narrative around just yet – although seeds around that notion are beginning to grow.

I have made an agreement to start videoing in a couple of days. The three players involved and I met yesterday to discuss the script and ‘run-through’ the lines – motivations etc. – are still keen to make this happen. I did a couple of test shots, worked out how I think I will frame the scenes, angles etc. I am trying to follow my script at this stage, although recognizing that on the day I may need to improvise. Costumes were discussed and agreed as well as props. I have had to ask for a model release for one of the characters – the other two have already signed on for me in the past.

I now need to think about shooting sequences in a practical sense, continuity issues. The location has been chosen such that the afternoon there is no direct sunlight on the scene. The light therefore (hopefully) should be quite soft, it certainly was when I made the test shots, and should remain consistent for a couple of hours. I only have one scene (non-speaking contextual) outside, so I am hopeful.

On the copyright issue, I have contacted the original work’s author – still awaiting a response – but if nothing is forthcoming I may have to make the video ‘private’, which I am loathe to do as I think the wider the audience the more likely I am to receive a response, so I much prefer to be as public as possible.