All posts tagged video

Continental Drift DV Footage

Things have been very quiet on this blog for months, as I’ve been in pre/production for my short film Continental Drift. Plenty of interesting stories to tell from the process, but for now, while still in post, here’s a snippet about some of the footage we have been collecting for the project.

Most of the film is shot on Super 16mm film, however the protagonist, Adele, shoots video on her DV handycam throughout the film – a comment on how she as somebody with intimacy issues mediates her experiences through the camera, and the voyeuristic nature of being a tourist, as well as a way of getting inside her head as a character. Most of the time the footage is diagetic, inherent to the film, as video she or others is clearly shooting as part of the action. At some other particular times we are using DV footage as emotional atmospheres.

Michael Williams, our wonderful DOP, and myself went down to the bay in Melbourne last weekend to capture some sunset over the water and later the moon, both important textures in the film. Speaking of textures, some of the way the DV camera handles the light on water and other parts of the landscape is just beautiful! Who really needs all that resolution, all the time? This is ungraded, raw DV handycam footage.

Some pictures of our expedition…

Michael Williams, DOP, Fine Art Photographer, Beach Lover

Michael Williams, DOP, Fine Art Photographer, Handycam Appreciator

Red Camera Tips


Red One Camera

I’m collecting a summary of tips for shooting on the Red One camera (with original Red One chip, as per the model we have available at the VCA). Culled from other useful references are the Red manuals and various forums and interviews.

Critical Commons

Featured Clips on Critical Commons

Featured Clips on Critical Commons

I recently finished another iteration of development on the Critical Commons website, with Andy Nicholson of Infinite Recursion. Critical Commons is an online resource for film educators that pushes the boundaries of fair use (copyright) legislation by making clips from films available with academic commentaries, in both text and audio format. The site, devised by the USC School of Cinematic Arts Institute for Multimedia Literacy, enables lecturers to organise collections of clips and commentaries as lectures for classroom delivery (such as this one on Deleuze and cinema). The website is built on the Plumi software, originally created by EngageMedia, a free open source software project to create a video sharing web application based on the Plone content management system.

NATO (Northern Arts Tactical Offensive)

Still from promo for NATO

Still from promo for NATO

This is one from the archives. A 35 second promo for the Northern Arts Tactical Offensive, to be used at screenings and events (obviously, or quacking for details may be somewhat less effective). NATO was a collective in Manchester who did various subversive and situationist-influenced performances and other artworks, including the March for Capitalism and a spoof tourist guide to Manchester for the Commonwealth Games (2002), directing tourists to the alternative Blitz Festival of international grassroots underground culture, in the form exhibitions, street theatre, outdoor music, film nights and presentations.

From NATO’s website:

NATO is a Manchester-based grassroots art collective. Our work as a collective, or through collaborative projects, aims to bring grassroots and underground art dealing with current social and environmental issues out of the confines of its more typical contexts, exposing it to a more diverse and mainstream audience.

We believe art and culture can be used as part of the transformation of life, society, and our everyday reality, not just a diversion from it.

True art and imagination can be used as part of the transformation of life, society, and our everyday reality, not a diversion from it. Art can be at its most inspired when it fosters awareness of the power each individual has to act for themselves, to make their own art, to believe in their own ideas, take control of their lives and change them.

Link to the subsequent Fundamental international art show exploring totalitarian religion here.

Rabid Tripped-Out Psychedelic Lesbian Koalas

The session Kelli Jean and I have been curating for the Bangalore Queer Film Festival 2010 is finally finished! The festival in on this weekend, wish I could be there in India to see it… maybe next year! Here is a blurb and list of the great films which made it into the program. Hopefully we’ll be able to announce screenings for Melbourne and Sydney soon.

This program is a survey of recent radical gender/queer and trans video from Australia, curated by Anna Helme and Kelli Jean Drinkwater. “Galactic Sex Wars” rockets us into a futuristic sci-fi world where homos and heteros face off across time and space. “Jorey Corson”, “Ultimate! Dance! Video!” and “Drag Acts” address the performativity of gender, featuring queer and transgender bodies in motion, in masks and moustaches, camping it up in the streets of Berlin, tumbling across an empty sports field at night, inhabiting both the intimate and theatrical. “M.C. G.F.C.” addresses the global fashion crisis, evoking Ru Paul’s “we’re born naked, and the rest is drag”. “With Him of All People” takes a relationship drama into parallel universes of alternate gender. “Procession” is a slice of reality, albeit from a bent perspective, from the Camp Betty weekend of radical sex and politics in 2007, featuring a performative “protest”, aiming to dislocate commonplace demonstration cliches, and generally disrupt the suburbs of Melbourne.

  • Galactic Sex Wars (13:54) – Robbie McEwan
  • Jorey Corson (4:10) – Corey coda & Jackson monsternighttimepower
  • M.C. G.F.C. (4:21) – Anna Helme
  • Procession (6:51)- Anna Helme
  • Ultimate! Dance! Video! (3:31)- Sarakaka and Holly Fluxx
  • With Him of All People (6:24)- Kt spit and Cyd Nova
  • Flipbook (0:10)- Robbie McEwan & Anna Helme
  • Drag Acts (13:32)- Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore & Anastasia Zaravinos
Still from "Galactic Sex Wars" - Robbie McEwan

"Galactic Sex Wars" - Robbie McEwan

Jorey Corson - Corey & Jackson

"Jorey Corson" - Corey & Jackson

Still from "Procession" by Anna Helme

"Procession" - Anna Helme

Still from "With Him of All People" by Kt Spit & Cyd Nova

"With Him of All People" - Kt Spit & Cyd Nova

"Ultimate! Dance! Video!" by Sara Kaka Harro & Holly Fluxx

"Ultimate! Dance! Video!" - Sara Kaka Harro & Holly Fluxx

Drag Acts - Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore & Anastasia Zaravinos

"Drag Acts" - Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore & Anastasia Zaravinos

"M.C. G.F.C." - Anna Helme

"M.C. G.F.C." - Anna Helme

Flipbook - Robbie McEwan & Anna Helme

"Flipbook" - Robbie McEwan & Anna Helme

Bangalore Queer Film Festival Callout for Australian Shorts

Rabid Tripped-Out Psychedelic Lesbian Koalas

Rabid Tripped-Out Psychedelic Lesbian Koalas

I’m currently putting together a package of queer films from Australia for the Bangalore Queer Film Festival in February 2010. My friend Namita (who I met through the Transmission Asia-Pacific network of online video activists) is involved, so it’s bound to be intelligent, provocative and fun fun fun (read some of her thoughts on Queering Bollywood here or perspectives on porn from the global south here). You can find last year’s program here along with more info on the organisers. It’s a D.I.Y. event, so there isn’t much in the way of screening fees, just the joy of reaching queer Indian audiences with your work!

In terms of the kind of films the festival is looking for – the crazier / more flipped out the better. Suits me! Camp, rude, trashy, experimental.. anything goes, and any kinda queer you like. So with this in mind, the working title for this program will be “Rabid Tripped Out Psychedelic Lesbian Koalas” ;) First prize goes to somebody who actually makes and submits that as a B-movie! Shorts in particular, but features considered also. Any digital format should be fine.

Emcee Battle of the Werdz Nerdz

Final shooting finished on my current short film production “Scrabbled Eggs” a week ago, but I haven’t had time to post the photos from our photoshootuntil now as I’ve been busy working on my classmates’ shoots since then. These photos are a few I picked out from the photoshoot we did in Collingwood a couple of weeks back, I’m real happy with how they turned out, mostly thanks to my most wacky friends who were kind enough to be in it :{) This sequence features the two main characters Missy Spelling-It (Eva Pears) and Thesaurius B.I.G. (Ryan Burrett) along with their respective posses played by Texta, Katie, Doushka, Crystal, Ben Hastie, Ben Stegh, Dan and Lachlan. These photos aren’t the exact snaps I’ll be using in the film, or in the exact order, but you get the idea.

After finishing up on other peoples shoots next week I’ll be getting down to the task of post-sync recording, visual fx and music in preparation for editing in early October. The movie has to be finished by the end of October, and there’ll be a cast n crew screening at 303 on High St in Northcote (which was also our location for the cafe in the movie) on the 10th of November.

“SCRABBLED EGGS” currently in pre-production

Coroner's Report

Image from Newspaper Mock-Up Prop for "Scrabbled Eggs"

It’s 11:37pm on a Friday night and I’m at home working on my film… must be production time! Yes shooting for “Scrabbled Eggs” starts in less than 2 weeks. This is a digital image I just made to use in a mock-up newspaper that the main character, Missy Spelling-It will be reading whilst sitting in the cafe… More soon!

Free Jazz

Free Jazz (1min 31sec, 2009) is a short film about how far you can push music beyond its boundaries, before it breaks. Emile Ouiseau is an experimental saxophonist who plays such free music that his notes literally escape him. Can he re-capture his errant quavers in time?

John Maloney in Free Jazz (photo by Florence Holmes)

John Maloney in Free Jazz (photo by Florence Holmes)

This is the first short I made at film school earlier this year, dedicated to my dear little H. I made it for his birthday, but then I gave him a fishing rod, which will no doubt give him more pleasure than this film ;{)

Update: Cutest quotes ever from H after watching the film “I love you and I hope you come back to you again, I loved the movie, Maisey plays the trumpet, I’m thirsty, I love all the bits that have Hunter in them, I want you to guess, I think it was, uh, love how you make movies, goodnight.” However, I can also confirm that the fishing rod still managed to trump it.

Artesian AV Arkestra

Here’s me and Louise Terry having our earliest “Electric Dreams”…

Louise n Anna

(thanks to bec stegh for the photo)

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