There is something fascinating to me in the process of image fidelity, compression, loss, and the vagueness you can achieve by running something through processes, either analogue or digital. This often applies to video images, as evidenced in some experiments I filmed a few years ago that can be viewed here. The inspiration for the video came in a few different layers.
First of all, it was opportunistic because of the weather. Will (the girl in the video) and I were living in Sale in close proximity to Sale Water Park, which is a regular photo/video haunt of mine, and the weather turned very cold and there had been heavy snow. I thought it would be a great and rare opportunity to film in these kinds of conditions, and so we went out and braved the weather to see what kind of interesting shots we could get. There was no sense of a narrative structure that I wanted to create, and beyond creating an interesting collage of moving images I had no particular agenda, hoping simply instead to just gather more material for later use. As we were out, the snow began again and proceeded to get heavier and heavier. I had some sense of inspiration for mood, or tone at least, and so we improvised some very basic sequences. Will was a trooper and did very well considering there was no narrative to follow, and she was very cold (she doesn't like being cold). All in all we used only about half of the footage in the above video, and all of it was from later on in the filming session. This is something I've noticed quite often when I attempt improvisational work like this, in that it takes some time to get flowing creatively and for the interesting material to be generated, with a lot of the early work being somewhat formless and not very relevant. I used a tripod in these early shots, but in the final edit most of the shots ended up being handheld. The camera itself was not new or particularly modern and although it has quite a decent set of features, the image fidelity is relatively low. It uses hard drive storage or SSD memory, rather than tape, and is fairly low resolution, making it a handy camera but not suitable for a lot of things, however it is this lack of fidelity that proves essential later.
I had cut together a video in a few hours using Adobe Premier (a horribly unstable piece of crap) and tweaked colours and tones in various ways to produce an interesting end product. There was a level of texture I felt was missing, however, and some time later (how long I am not sure at the moment, possibly months, maybe just days) I decided to try an experiment, inspired by this trailer for video game Silent Hill 4: The Room, which I found to be deeply provocative and interesting and is the video that had me hooked on the entire series, when before it was completely obscure to me. The trailer had a distinct 'VHS' feel to it, and it would appear that footage of the game (which is largely lacking in menus or displays during gameplay, leaving the player with simply the image of the game environment and characters) was filmed on a handheld camera, which transforms the often clunky graphics of the game (I was definitely a bit disappointed when I actually played it, because the level of detail in parts was certainly not as good as it could have been) into something very organic, very real. It becomes flesh in the video in a way that wasn't quite there in the game itself. Ultimately the trailer is simply a collection of images and doesn't have narration or attempt to relay the game's story in any meaningful way, like a trailer normally would. Also, the trailer is exceptionally long for the format, making it something more of an art-house film than a marketing product. It is an entity all unto itself and I keep finding myself coming back to it as a source of inspiration. I was also influenced by Shinya Tsukamoto's A Snake of June, previously discussed, in that it is filmed in black and white but there is a blue tone overlaying it, giving it a distinct, maybe slightly perverted feel, that really permeates everything within the film.
I filmed a playback of the video I made on my computer screen, and then ran this through Adobe Premier again, applying more effects and also making attempts at creating an abstract soundtrack on a number of occasions, eventually settling on a piece I made using Fruity Loops (primarily used for sequencing electronic music, but a powerful tool for recording and editing music or samples also), using samples of animals slowed down and mixed with various effects, with some layered synths. I removed all colour from the footage, and then applied a similar blue hue to 'wrap' the video, resulting in some very good effects. I showed Ian this video on my laptop (sadly my laptop speakers are rubbish and the soundtrack was inaudible) and he described it as "disturbing", which I took as a compliment. As an experiment, it is one of my most successful pieces so far.
See also a short video I improvised with a friend of mine, Dom. We did not record usable audio, with a mind to maybe adding it later, but this never came about as I hadn't planned that element enough in advance, and so it became quite a problem to implement. The video was meant to be simply an exercise, and fun, and from start to finish took about 25 minutes to produce, with around 2 hours time editing. It could be considered a silent film, I suppose. You can clearly see how much fun Dom is having in this video. I had a lot of fun as well. Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn is definitely an influence on this piece. It is one of my favourite films. Comedy and horror can be one of the most successful combinations.
"How To Haunt Yourself"
