A Little Less Conversation

Photos, videos and reblogs of little snippets of inspiration for projects relating to my MSc in Filmmaking and Media Arts at Glasgow University.

[all-the-news]

The Mercantile: A Short Film About a Montana Bakery

The Mercantile: A Short Film About a Montana Bakery

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/382397/the-mercantile-a-short-film-about-a-montana-bakery/

[via theatlantic]

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[lethaltexture-blog]

As part of my MSc course, I am proposing to develop a non-fiction film exhibiting the small business owners of Glasgow, chronicling the journey of the business owners, discussing various elements of their story, such as their early beginnings, their hopes or dreams for the future and the struggles they face on a daily basis persuading people to shop with them.

The inspiration for this project came to me when visiting a small independent bakery in Partick, run by a young woman and her husband. Her lifelong dream achieved, she wanted to pass this passionate enthusiasm on to her customers. It is well documented how big corporations slowly destroy small businesses, despite their proprietors caring a great deal more about their customers. Seeing the time, energy and care this woman had put in, I realised how unfair it was that these people are rarely afforded a channel to give their voice, or often falls on deaf ears.

My aim for this project would be to provide a vehicle for these people to show the people of Glasgow, Scotland and beyond, that people and businesses like theirs certainly have a determination to succeed, and present the idea that people should do more to provide their financial, emotional and moral support to vendors who genuinely care. I would go about this project by ensuring my research is proper and thorough: contacting and visiting various businesses, interviewing their owners and making notes about their thoughts and opinions to better steer the narrative in a coherent fashion, allowing the business owners themselves to steer the messages and themes of the project rather than having it conform to my own preconceived ideas.

[lethaltexture-blog]

The aforementioned short is here; a short film made up of six still shots from six locations across the city of Glasgow. The film, as a technical exercise, attempts to follow a strict rule of thirds with clearly defined foregrounds, middle and backgrounds. The film places a strong focus on the contrast between natural and man-made objects.

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During filming for a filming exercise, I had taken a few stills during my journey across the city of Glasgow, and this is one that I am particularly fond of.  The finished film will be posted here in the coming days, but I wanted to portray the coming together of the natural and man-made world in a visually poignant way.

This photo was taken in Queen's Park in Glasgow, and plays with the natural framing created by the goalposts and the reflection that the flooded pitch casts of the church spire in the background.

[lethaltexture-blog]

Here is a showreel that I put together alongside my final year project when I graduated from Staffordshire University.  It is a little out of date now, not to mention the fact that my website url has changed (lethaltexture.com in case you were wondering) but a couple of changes could be made to it to make it look a little more professional.

Either way, I hope you enjoy watching it as it will give you a little insight into me as a filmmaker and a crew member.  As you can see, I've worked on a variety of things and I hope to extend my skillset in the future.

[lethaltexture-blog]

On 18th October 2014, my partner and I went on a trip with the International Student society at Glasgow University to Northumberland, where we visited a variety of locations including Holy Island, Alnwick Castle and Bamburgh Castle.  Architecture from the Middle Ages has always impressed and intrigued me, and I feel that they are greatly versatile locations to film across various genres.

An ultimate aim for me would be involved in a historical production shooting in or around a castle, as it would combine great interests of mine; the idea that you could be paying homage to an age and culture while standing in the same areas they were.  Here are a couple of images that stood out to me on the trip. 

[msbrightside12]

Don’t tend to like colour popping but it kinda works with the NYC cabs. 🚖

[lethaltexture-blog]

The yellow cabs are a symbol of New York City and are something that will immediately come to mind when thinking about the city for many people; however they are such a part of the fabric of the society that in a standard, true-to-life capture of a typical downtown street they would fail to stand out at all.

Here is one of the strengths of colour popping; a specific subject can be put into sharp focus to give it the respect it deserves.  Something similar could be done with other aspects of places, such as the red buses of London.

[axollot]

Rainbow huts Saltdean Seafront by Guineapig-crazy on Flickr.

[lethaltexture-blog]

A great example of the colour pop effect, even more so considering the photographer has chosen to use a wide selection of colours to focus on.  It seems that the key to achieving it correctly is to choose locations that have a high contrast of colour so that the effect is clean and crisp, with no colours bleeding into other areas of the frame.

[lethaltexture-blog]

I think colour popping is a very aesthetically pleasing and visually provocative tool that is too underused in moving image.  It is used to great effect in photography to draw your eye to a certain thing in the frame or put emphasis on it for greater emotion, but very few films use it to great effect or to its full potential.

Perhaps this is because it can only be achieved through post production (unless no living things are present), but I feel that to crate a film using this technique would satisfy both the artistic needs of a film as well as the metaphorical ones that it tries to put across.  I will put more research into this topic to develop ideas for a future project, but here are a couple of examples I have taken and edited recently.

[lethaltexture-blog]

"Gone; just over there!

Just had to find him.

It won't stop, have to remain positive;

You get carried away in the middle of hills and trees.

End of a road.  There's a hydro electric power station.

A big moon.  Pitch dark.  Find him; sure he was fine.

I wasn't.

Give me a sign!

I don't think he would be able.

He was nervous inside; mystery and terror.

Longing; that is pain.

Even as a little baby

He always likes to be outside

Where rabbits live.  It was my idea,

Get an ice cream; so thats what we did.

It was a minute: a police car came,

Cameron started walking, that little bit he walked!

A steep slope, into the dark dense trees.

On the path, looking in the right place.

We are going to find him;

His only son."

As an exercise in a recent sound workshop, a partner and I were challenged to take small snippets of a radio documentary, with the proper order unknown to us, and rearrange them in an artistic way.  We ended up arranging them in such a way that a poem-like structure came about, and I have taken the scraps and tried to punctuate them in a poetic way.

In the writing, I tried to put across an atmospheric, night-time scene with a woman looking for a small boy.  Evoking imagery such as the fill moon, pitch darkness and dark, dense trees are meant to put a terrorising, claustrophobic sense into the reader.  The dialogue structure is constructed in such a way that tells the reader the protagonist is out of breath; panting, she has been running and chasing after this mysterious child.

The ending is meant to have religious connotations; has the woman been possessed?  Just who is the child?  A child of the devil perhaps?  The final stanza is key; previously she had been describing herself as "I", now she speaks of "we".  As the poem progresses, the stanzas get shorter as to symbolise her detachment from herself.

Just who is the child the only son of?  That is left up to the viewer but, I feel this is very evoking and powerful imagery; despite not being religious myself, it is still a very interesting topic.  Any criticism of the poem formatting is welcome as it is not my area; I have studied poetry before so I hope to have the form down.  If not, let me know! 

Also, title suggestions would be appreciated!

[lethaltexture-blog]

Another documentary film of mine; Vis Unita Fortior (2013). As I am from a working class family in a working class area but still very proud of my heritage and where I come from, I wanted to share this with an audience through someone who shares my views, but still realises that nothing is perfect.

This film is an ode to my hometown, a place that I may never live in permanently again but will forever be my home, no matter where I end up on my limitless journey of life.  The film's title comes from the city's motto, and in today's world, the idea that united strength is stronger is something that everybody should bear in mind.

[lethaltexture-blog]

"Governments have periodically sought to establish internal order and relative unity by pursuing war against foreign foes."

I'm not sure who first said this, but I cannot help but disagree with their sentiments.  I cannot recall any war in history that has been started for, or by its continuation, establishing internal order and unity within civilizations.  War is a disruptor, and entire communities are devastated by it.

It seems like someone is letting their opinion of war get in the way of reason, as if trying to find a justification for their perception of war-hungry leaders.  I highly doubt that any reputable world leader would allow their country to go to war, and put their people in danger, to "keep them in line".

While it could be said that certain wars bring people together against a common enemy (the famous Blitz spirit of Britain during WWII is an example of this) it is a very archaic idea, almost anarchic and totalitarian in its inception, to suggest that anybody who experienced either of the world wars, the Vietnam war, the Korean war, the Falklands war or any other war you can mention, would say that they put their lives at risk, and watched friends die for the cause, purely to establish order.

It is oxmoronic in and of itself: since when does conflict bring order? 

[lethaltexture-blog]

This photograph intrigued me purely from a technical standpoint, as it doesn't really have any depth or underlying messages on its own.  Admittedly it does have a certain ghost-like quality to it, but I feel it was completed as a technical exercise rather than trying to evoke any particular emotion in the viewer. 

While the photographer in question was not identified, it is evident that they must have some degree of skill, asking a person to move quickly around the displays while holding a torch of the flashlight open on a smartphone, with a long exposure time and shutter speed allowing the displays to be visible in scene and the light trails possible, without having a person present in the photo.

Playing with long exposure and time-lapses with moving image is something that I have a small amount of experience with, and I would love to enhance my abilities with these techniques.  As an amateur photographer myself, its things like this that inspire me to fire up my camera and get out there!

[lethaltexture-blog]

A couple of things attracted me to this collection of portraits by Yvonne Todd; not only the humorous name (Ethical Minorities (Vegans) (2014)), but the expressive colours that are used.  While it is obvious that these are staged, set-up portraits, it challenges our perception of stereotypes and prejudices, just like many people's views on the minorities the piece makes wordplay on.

The people presented here are portrayed as normal people; they may be vegans but is there anything odd or different about them?  We almost expect them to look different or act differently, but the artist wants to dispel this.  However, one thing that struck me about it, and is a big discussion point for me personally, is the mother and child in the top right portrait.  Did the child decide on his own that he wanted to be a vegan, or did his mother make that choice for him?

A great documentary piece could be created that explores this, as I feel that people often force their ethics and beliefs onto their offspring (whether they do it consciously or not), and I believe that this is completely wrong to do, as people should be allowed to figure things out on their own, whether it be eating habits, sexuality or religion.  I would definitely like to explore this idea further by meeting with vegan families and asking them about their lives while documenting it on screen.

[lethaltexture-blog]

This eye-catching piece, called I'm a lady (2009) is a digital photograph edited by Mary Sibande, a South African artist (the original picture was taken by John Hodgkiss).  The sharp cobalt blue is a very powerful colour in contrast to the dull secondary colours, and makes the subject stand out greatly, making great use of colour popping.

This picture, combining both the subject and her attire, immediately alludes to the slave trade, and the struggle that many afro-carribean people have been through over the years.  The fact that she is holding a parasol, typically carried by upper-class women of the same period, tells the audience that through all the strife, many of these people longed to be free of the social and political constraints that their ethnicity has placed upon them.

To me, colour popping is a very visually striking technique to employ, and it is a shame that it is mainly used only in photography rather than film.. Although more difficult to achieve in moving image, it is something that I would be very interested in exploring in future film projects, and the theme of emancipation gives me a platform to achieve this.

[lethaltexture-blog]

Although difficult to see in the image, this piece, called Ultralow (1997) and created by Jim Lambie, was very intriguing when I viewed it.  Set in a pitch-dark room, the TV displays a twenty-one minute film of the creator smoking a cigarette, taking drags from it various times, all overlayed over each other.  The screen is also pitch-dark, with only the orange, burning embers of the cigarette visible.

As with a previous exhibit I have documented, I feel that it was let down by the environment in which it was presented: the screen's black areas were still lit, so it detracted from the experience.  I believe that if the projection was much bigger, and a display technology was used that meant darkness was "truly dark" (Nokia's PureBlack technology achieves this on their high-end smartphone devices) then it would be much more effective.

I feel like this display made me think even more about the environments in which films are presented and, while I don't believe that a film such as this would be accepted in and of itself as a piece of filmmaking, it showed what can be achieve very simply, and it will be important to bear these elements in mind on future projects.

[lethaltexture-blog]

This next piece was in installation put together by Stephen Campbell, called On Form and Fiction (1990).  He makes use of drawing, painting, lighting and sound to create an extistential environment of escapism, with influence of his knowledge of art history and culture.  The images were very human and seemed to relate to various periods of human history.

I admit that I did find the room an enchanting place to be; it drew you in to the images with the colours and use of art on the walls a pleasant and stark contrast to the rest of the gallery, which were white, plain and sparse.  However, the most striking part of the piece was the girl painted in the image above.  It was very colourful, and the background was of a lake and mountains, making it very calm and expansive.  The girl, though, was in massive contrast, looking deep into the viewer with a chilling, almost horrific stare.  It created one of those unpleasantly familiar situations where you can’t bare to look, but cannot bring yourself to look away.

I feel like this image will be one that will stay with me, and I would love to recreate the look of this girl with a character in a non-fiction film in the future, hopefully putting across the same feelings within the audience that this painting did with me.

[lethaltexture-blog]

One of the first pieces observed on the Edinburgh trip was this exhibition by Martin Boyce, called Our Love is Like the Flowers, the Rain, the Sea and the Hours (2002).  The items on display create imagery normally associated with the outside world and brings it inside, put together to create an urban park.  This creates a juxtaposition between the natural world and the manufactured world.

I believe this piece was meant to cause unease in the viewer, reminding them of a familiar place but at the same time making it unfamiliar.  I appreciate what the artist was trying to do here, but I believe the environment in which it has been presented lets it down, and reduces its effect.

A sense of unease is a common theme in film but a powerful one if used correctly,  but possibilities of characters being lost and alone in a park that they know well, with imagery of darkness, night-time and moonlight, could evoke similar feelings in the viewer.  Plain, dark colours without liveliness would be the best choice for mise-en-scene.