Shorts

This is not a great film in some ways (poor acting and dialogue and why is she wearing dark glasses?  That is just confusing when we have a blind guy here!) but it is an interesting example of how to invoke an emotional reaction with a simple scene in a very short time....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX5aRzXUzJo

Assignment 4: constructing a narrative

Pre-production notes

Aim: to create a short documentary sequence representing a portrait of a place, capturing the spirit and feel of the place as well as what happens there.

Chosen location: my flat in Whitechapel, conveying a sense of the sadness I felt while my husband was away in hospital for several months; using creative ‘licence’ to make things look more dismal than they were – need to be very selective about what is shown.

Shot list

1. Gate with spider webs
2. Hanging basket
3. Pond pump
4. Dead plant on ground
5. Buckets
6. Bird feeder
7. Shed to wheelchair (panning)
8. Electricity box
9. Mantelpiece (panning)
10. Bathroom chair (half-hidden)
11. Clock
12. Hallway (me walking past then towards camera)
13. Fridge (wine)
14. Drainer (glass)
15. Pouring wine
16. Sink (dripping)
17. Bean can into sink
18. On sofa watching TV
19. In bed
20. Getting up
21. Empty bed
22. Sitting on bed
23. Close-up of blinds

Rejected shots (due to time constraints):

Water bowl

Tatty sunflower leaves

Blanket on washing line

Dying palm leaf

View to closed door down hallway

Pan of lounge walls

Close up of gas box

Close up of boiler lights

Sink in bathroom

Taking the wine away

Light pull in bathroom being turned off

Chart of narrative structure

Storyboards

The final sequence

Evaluation

This short film represents a portrait of my home during the long period of time while my husband was in hospital in Oxford.  He developed life-threatening septicaemia from a bone infection last September and has only recently been discharged. 

I adore our small, bohemian flat but was surprised to find very little comfort in my environment without him.  During this time I came across Philip Larkin’s poem, Home is so sad, which gave me the idea for the title and theme of the project.

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,

Shaped to the comfort of the last to go

As if to win them back. Instead, bereft

Of anyone to please, it withers so,

Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,

A joyous shot at how things ought to be,

Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:

Look at the pictures and the cutlery.

The music in the piano stool. That vase.

My main visual inspiration for this assignment was Yellow Patch by Zarina Bhimji (2011). According to one critic: “… within the empty spaces of elegant decay she depicts, I see the patina of people and the breadth of existence that it would be hard to find in a hundred straightforward stories or cinematic clichés.” I was mesmerised by this work. It really forced me to slow down and think about what the artist was trying to convey.

Our flat is very colourful, alive and inviting so it was quite a challenge to depict the space as anything less than vibrant and cosy. I wanted to establish an atmosphere of loneliness and neglect and so selected dead plants, stagnant water, and an empty bird feeder. I filmed these close up and with shallow depth of field to accentuate the feeling of isolation and abandonment and to encourage the viewer to contemplate the sadness of the moment.

The wheelchair under a tarp on the deck gives the first real clue that, while the space is inhabited, someone is absent.  The ambient city noises reinforce the sense of solitude whilst life goes on outside.  The camera focuses on the passage of time with the (hardly moving) electricity meter and the clock. Cut to photos of us as a couple on the wall, as I arrive home to a silent flat.  The empty fridge and my immediate beeline to the wine indicates a less than happy household.

I have tried not to be too heavy-handed with the symbolism of being alone in the flat but used indicators such as my hand on the bed, whilst I stare at the confining ‘bars’ of the blind.  There are some inevitable ambiguities about the actual story here (is the husband dead or has he abandoned his wife?) but I am hopeful that I have captured the atmosphere of a home that feels empty and melancholy.  This is my portrait of a home that is so sad.

"...wishes she could talk again with 'that photographer lady'..."

What happened to the 9-year-old smoking in Mary Ellen Mark's photo?


"This photograph raises a lot of questions and leaves me with a slightly uneasy feeling," says Jeff Jacobson, a New York photographer and a friend of Mark's. "That, I feel, over and over again is the hallmark of her best work."

Tintype for celebrity portraits

http://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-photography-sundance-celebrities-tintypes-2015-victoria-will/

Great portraits - intimate but not intrusive...

Mobiles pics from Sony World Photography Awards

From the HuffPo:

"Sony on Tuesday announced the winners of the Sony World Photography Awards' Mobile Phone category.

Mobile is just one of many categories in the competition. Others include Professional, Open and Youth.

There were more than 96,000 entries across the Youth, Open and Mobile categories. Mobile alone saw 10,200 photo submissions, and winners in the category were chosen by an online vote from a shortlist of 20 photos. The entry that won first place got 6,718 votes, Sony says."

Sony photography competition - mobile

Returning from a study hiatus...

I have been away from here for far too long. 

My husband became very ill last September, from complications due to his paraplegia. It was touch and go that he would even survive but he is stubborn and brave and brilliant so he has been slowly battling back to health ever since. 

He is still in hospital and we have no date yet for his release. And, he is in Oxford so it is a six hour round trip for me to visit him. These last months have been extremely difficult and quite surreal.

The OCA very kindly agreed to me taking a break from my studies and gave me an extension on the deadline for the submission of my final assignment for this course. Whilst things are by no means back to normal yet - if indeed they ever will be - I am starting to see a light at the end of this dark tunnel and am eager to get back to my studies and photography, whenever possible.

So... HELLO world!  I'm back.

I have three months to complete the course and when better to start again than right bloody now?

My tutor has been in touch: "might I suggest that you use your current situation in some way to inform the narrative that you will produce for this final assignment.  I know that for some people making work can be a way to help cope with difficult times."  This seems eminently sensible to me.  As my 'free' time is so restricted I had actually already begun to film (very discreetly) in Matt's hospital room to see if there might be enough of the right material for me to weave into an assignment. Early days yet, but definitely a possibility.

Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules for writing a short story

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Good advice for film makers I reckon.