recent videos, thoughts + place

A couple of weeks ago I filmed a 12 minute video called Thoughts.

The video was shot pointing down at my feet as I walked along the river Mersey in Manchester heading towards Didsbury. And that's it, pretty much.

The video came out of three influences. The primary influence being an online review of Gus Van Sant's film Gerry.

In the review, the film was discussed in connection with things believed to be an influence on it. They included: a long scene, shown only in part, of people walking away from the camera from Béla Tarr's Sátántangó, which I have not yet seen; the long takes of Andrei Tarkovsky; and the way in which characters in games often have to walk from one location to another, the example given being Tomb Raider.

The first of these was beautiful to watch, and appears to have been drawn as a comparison by critics. Tarkovsky was mentioned more as an example of slow takes, rather than a direct influence. Finally, the Tomb Raider and gaming connection is one drawn by Van Sant himself in an interview.

I was particularly struck by his insight that this process of getting from one place to another often takes up a large part of games, but is usually omitted from films. This made him interested in replicating that experience of gaming in his film.

Also memorable were the shot from Sátántangó, and even more so, a shot from Gerry itself. In this, the camera tracks alongside the two men as they walk through the desert. Only head and shoulders are visible of the men, but their footsteps, rhythmic and propulsive can be heard loudly on the soundtrack.

So much for the first influence. You can see the review for yourself at, http://chezapocalypse.com/episodes/brows-held-high-gerry-redux/.

The second influence was the films of Miklós Jancsó, in particular Red Psalm, which I had recently seen. Like many of his films it features long scenes where the camera turns around large groups of people, themselves often in motion or counter-motion to the camera, frequently with other groups beyond.

The final influence was Charlemagne Palestine's Island Song (http://vimeo.com/4377234), in which the musician and composer rides a motorcycle around an island while hollering and occasionally chanting.

My idea was merely to make a reasonably long take of my feet walking. I wanted to capture the rhythmic fascination of the scene from Gerry. I did so, and the result was Thoughts: 

Almost straight away I thought it would have been more interesting to either have had more varied terrain underfoot, or to have filmed myself walking barefoot - especially in cold and wet weather.

In the event last weekend I set out to do both those things together. The venue was Pomona Strand and Pomona Island, and the video this time ended up around 16 minutes long.

The experience itself was the coldest and most painful experience of making a film I've yet had. Although I stood on a couple of bits of blackberry bushes, most painful to walk on (or in) were loose stones and the pools of cold water.

Unlike Thoughts this video, called Place, was more hesitant and less metronomic, as you might expect from someone trying to avoid hurting his feet more than necessary. However, it was also much more of a performance piece.

This may be something I develop further, though I'm not yet sure quite how. I am pretty clear that I don't want to just point the camera at my own feet again. There are more variations on that theme I can try, but they don't particularly interest me at present.

Anyway, Place: