mattreviews artists series - derek jarman

When I started mattreviews podcasts I had an unfocussed notion that I would like to examine the life and work of artists who are significant to me, whether personally, creatively or both.

Last night I finally made a start on that. I knew that I would start with Derek Jarman, and I knew that the examination would be considerably longer than the reviews I had done so far. What I did not know was how I would structure the essay. 

To resolve that question I decided to watch one of Jarman's films, take notes, and at the end try to order the information in a way that made sense. I chose War Requiem for three reasons: it was immediately to hand; it was topical, since it draws from Wilfred Owen's First World War poetry, and we are in the centenary year of the beginning of that conflict; and like a number of Jarman's films it feels simultaneously anomalous in his filmography, and representative.

Having watched War Requiem again, and the DVD extras around the making of the film, and having made extensive notes I was still faced with the task of ordering the material. So I opted for my usual naive approach of asking a series of very simple questions, and then building my response around those.

Here the questions were: What is it? How is it structured? What do I like about it? Anything I dislike? Echoes of other films; Make a case for it as [a] favourite.

I took an A1 board, and in landscape format divided it into three columns:

The central column was headed 'War Requiem', and beneath that the six questions, each with room for notes underneath. The central column of naive questions was further expanded by a single A4 sheet headed 'Facts', with three subheadings of 'Jarman', 'War Requiem film', and 'War Requiem music', under which key contextual information was noted.

The left column was headed 'Jarman - creatively + personally', and was used to expand on points spun out from the central column.

Finally the right hand column was headed 'My response to both Jarman + War Requiem'.  At the top of this column I wrote brief contextual notes relating to my love of Jarman and his films: 'First direct encounter thru Blue // War Requiem last feature film of his I saw. // A favourite - along with Blue, Angelic Conversation, The Last of England + The Garden'. Below that I sketched notes relating to my response to Jarman, his films, and to some of his other work. This was additionally expanded by my three pages of notes. As I filled out the board with my sketchy notes I ticked off each point that was addressed. At the end I circled any points not yet tackled, which tended to be more expansive reflections, the majority of which seemed to fit best with the third column. This column is used to begin and to end the review.

With the structuring notes completed I sat down to record my essay, extemporised from those notes. That was achieved in a single take of close to 90 minutes. Around the same length as the film. There is a little roughness in the recording, but not so much as to render it unlistenable.

I uploaded the review to my computer, did some very simple editing (essentially cutting off the sounds of the recorder being switched on and off at the beginning and end of the recording, and setting the level of volume), exported that to iTunes, and from there to SoundCloud.

Normally mattreviews is hosted at Audioboo, but I already knew before I started that my artists series' essays are likely to be over an hour. Since I cannot currently afford a premium Audioboo membership my podcasts are limited to ten minutes. I felt that it was impractical to divide the essays into what would have been in this case nine sections. For that reason I took the decision to post the entire essay to my SoundCloud profile with a link to the mattreviews podcast. For Audioboo I created a file featuring a specially recorded introduction and conclusion, between which the first six and a half minutes of the review were placed. That was posted with a link referring back to full essay at SoundCloud.

By then it was half past three in the morning, and time for bed. The entire process took six and a half hours.

Having listened back once to the whole piece I am content that I have done a reasonable job. I have embedded the full essay below, but you can also go directly to the ten minute opening at Audioboo, or to the complete essay at SoundCloud.

There will be some more reviews before the next entry in the 'artists series', which at present I intend to be The Fall/Mark E Smith. I have no plans for when that will be.

Thanks for your time, and I will leave with mattreviews podcast: artist series - Derek Jarman: