Thursday 30th November: The Experimental Emprise (Task 2)
Prologue
Now, I know what you're thinking. "But Cameron! Why is this post titled the 30th of November when it was released on the 14th of December!?" Well curious reader, I shall answer your question simply and precisely! I have accidentally begun to hit save rather than publish and today is deadline day so I'm glad I double checked everything! Hence the sudden influx of posts today! So enjoy all this sudden tasty content!
Creative Project Development and Realisation - Task 2
Experimental films are if anything, the most unique pieces of media you'll find out there. Almost every single one differs creatively or technically in some way from the last one you watched. So, this being task 2 of the semester, I was expecting a completely new experience in the art of experimental film. Here's how it went down.
How was it supposed to go down?
Continuing with the theme "Sense of Space", Task 2 was actually a little more flexible and collaborative than the last! We were back in the same pairs, (which I was quite pleased with actually since Ryan and I seem to work quite well together) and this time our brief had us wandering around Sheffield getting close-up shots and wide shots of scenes and objects and surfaces and such.
We'd get audio of the same thing and do the old switcheroo on the two formats of media! Placing close-up sounds right next to wide shots. Why? Cause it sounds a bit weird and we like weird here in Film and Media! So we set a date, and we were off!
Another journey?!
Adventure number 2 had begun! And as luck would have it, I had already found interesting footage to use in the final film on the way to meet Ryan! Light flooding was going on along a road I usually walk past along a place in Sheffield called the Moor! it looked exactly like this:
Mainly because these were actually pictures Ryan took while we were there. So it did in fact look identical to these two pictures.
We didn't get to stay long enough to grab any proper footage however as a nearby construction worker told us we weren't allowed to be on the side of the road we were standing on at the time. Which was a shame.
Look, you can see my sad hands in the top left of picture 2 having to put the camera back before we crossed this dangerous watery obstacle once more. It would have made for some very interesting footage to see the pavement submerged like that but we cant get them all!
In our present location, Ryan and I were roughly around the city centre, so we decided to get as far away as possible to find new locations. And so, we boldly went!
As we ventured further away, we came across bridges, rivers and eventually, a tunnel:
As you can see, a very spidery tunnel! Which ironically we found no spiders in.
We managed to get many interesting shots in this area due to the light reflecting water onto the walls of the tunnel we found so useful! Turns out, we were on the cobweb bridge over the river Don! Which was in fact underneath another brick bridge! It'd been built like this all the way back in 2002 because they'd royally messed up and realised people would have to take an alterntive and lengthy route without a walkway here! Fun history fact for you!
We ended up getting to the end of the bridge with much more content than we'd entered the bridge on, and we were in high spirits! So we decided to walk around for another hour and a half, taking the long way back to the University campus. On the way, we discovered another fun little area tucked away underneath bridges, which seemed to have quickly become our theme without us realising! It looked something like this:
That's right we found our way to Victoria Quays! A small area with lots of potential footage contained within! So we got to work and got even more content to work with! Satisfied we'd gathered enough footage to work with, we made our way back to University for real this time.
Once our epic journey was over, we proceeded to the edit suit! To do none other, than edit the footage we had gathered! No simple task, as it took a few days. I ended up finishing off the edit at home and the film turned out quite well! You can see the finished version at the bottom of this post!
So with the film done and another task completed, would I say I achieved the goal of taking something educational away from this? Well I'd have been a bit dull not to! During the filming process we came across many issues. One of which being the lighting in the tunnel was quite low. The solution? Ryan used the torch on his phone to illuminate the things I wanted to film! Another issue was wanting to keep the camera still for certain close-up shots, but we hadn't taken out a tripod! Solution? Lean the camera against a wall or Ryan! This was definitely the task of improvising on the spot, and I certainly took a lot away from the whole experience.
Suspension Prevention from Cameron Hunter-Spokes on Vimeo.
Now, I know what you're thinking. "But Cameron! Why is this post titled the 30th of November when it was released on the 14th of December!?" Well curious reader, I shall answer your question simply and precisely! I have accidentally begun to hit save rather than publish and today is deadline day so I'm glad I double checked everything! Hence the sudden influx of posts today! So enjoy all this sudden tasty content!
Experimental films are if anything, the most unique pieces of media you'll find out there. Almost every single one differs creatively or technically in some way from the last one you watched. So, this being task 2 of the semester, I was expecting a completely new experience in the art of experimental film. Here's how it went down.
How was it supposed to go down?
Continuing with the theme "Sense of Space", Task 2 was actually a little more flexible and collaborative than the last! We were back in the same pairs, (which I was quite pleased with actually since Ryan and I seem to work quite well together) and this time our brief had us wandering around Sheffield getting close-up shots and wide shots of scenes and objects and surfaces and such.
We'd get audio of the same thing and do the old switcheroo on the two formats of media! Placing close-up sounds right next to wide shots. Why? Cause it sounds a bit weird and we like weird here in Film and Media! So we set a date, and we were off!
Another journey?!
Adventure number 2 had begun! And as luck would have it, I had already found interesting footage to use in the final film on the way to meet Ryan! Light flooding was going on along a road I usually walk past along a place in Sheffield called the Moor! it looked exactly like this:
Mainly because these were actually pictures Ryan took while we were there. So it did in fact look identical to these two pictures.
We didn't get to stay long enough to grab any proper footage however as a nearby construction worker told us we weren't allowed to be on the side of the road we were standing on at the time. Which was a shame.
Look, you can see my sad hands in the top left of picture 2 having to put the camera back before we crossed this dangerous watery obstacle once more. It would have made for some very interesting footage to see the pavement submerged like that but we cant get them all!
In our present location, Ryan and I were roughly around the city centre, so we decided to get as far away as possible to find new locations. And so, we boldly went!
As we ventured further away, we came across bridges, rivers and eventually, a tunnel:
As you can see, a very spidery tunnel! Which ironically we found no spiders in.
We managed to get many interesting shots in this area due to the light reflecting water onto the walls of the tunnel we found so useful! Turns out, we were on the cobweb bridge over the river Don! Which was in fact underneath another brick bridge! It'd been built like this all the way back in 2002 because they'd royally messed up and realised people would have to take an alterntive and lengthy route without a walkway here! Fun history fact for you!
 |
| Editing enthusiasm |
So with the film done and another task completed, would I say I achieved the goal of taking something educational away from this? Well I'd have been a bit dull not to! During the filming process we came across many issues. One of which being the lighting in the tunnel was quite low. The solution? Ryan used the torch on his phone to illuminate the things I wanted to film! Another issue was wanting to keep the camera still for certain close-up shots, but we hadn't taken out a tripod! Solution? Lean the camera against a wall or Ryan! This was definitely the task of improvising on the spot, and I certainly took a lot away from the whole experience.
Suspension Prevention from Cameron Hunter-Spokes on Vimeo.
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