On bike rides with my daughter along the creek I have been considering the water.
On the other hand it is quite repulsive, the sludge, the thought of being in that water - the smell... repellent.
I feel a connection to it though, I myself have a fairly limited range of motion, with a baby I can only move so far, but in stagnation - or mundanity - lies also beauty.
I've wanted to write about my feelings on animation for a while, and my current project 'Frühlingssturm' (Spring-storm) has given me a fair bit to think about on the subject.
It is my first fully photographic animation, all others until now have been drawn - either on paper or on some form of software (Photoshop, After Effects, TV Paint). It is photographed using a Bolex in the single exposure mode, on Ektachrome 16mm 100D.
The original idea was to make some kind of abstract time-lapse, a Frankensteinian mix of flowers blossoming and leaves growing from winter into spring, but to capture the different stages of growth on different plants as opposed to one plant or one image over an extended period of time/ growth.
I wanted to see how the animation of the growth would combine with the chaotic movement of the image/ frame, to see if there would be a through-line or if it would all just fall apart because of a lack of cohesion.
I found a mix of both, at points the growth and movement are cohesive, but more often there are the points of chaos, where something else takes over - our perception.
Just as we are fooled by traditional animation into seeing movement (even though we are seeing rapidly changing still single images), we project movement into the abstracted images.
This de- and subsequent re-construction is the new route that this project took.
From having the working title 'Frühlingsfarben' (Spring colours), to it's current title 'Frühlingssturm' (Spring-storm).
Just as the image has been put together from disparate but similar images so too is the sound. In my workshop at uni I found a tin someone had cut out to make into a phenakistiskope with a record player. I knew I wanted to make a rhythmic soundscape, the tin allowed me to hit the slits at intervals with different materials; sticks, screws, leaves, baby's toys. Recording with a stereo microphone helped give it all some auditory space.
I particularly appreciate the random rhythm in that it gives the image support without, for lack of a better word, regulating it. In that I mean the sounds that are often found in animated films where foleys are used so intensely that they inform the content rather than supporting it, they can take over. It is something that has always bugged me, and I still don't quite know how to describe it - maybe it can simply be described as obvious and bad foley sound. Which in itself needn't be such a bad thing, if it weren't so present, so common, that it can seem almost canonical to animation.
Sound is important, but animation is about movement, the magic of seeing the static come alive, and I hope that there is some life in this film.
I am in the process of writing and editing a short piece about trains.
Trains and fatherhood.
The unabating, relentless nature of these two, the locomotive and the child.
A few months back I bought some macro lens extension tubes for my Bolex, wanting to at least have the option of choosing that type of image for a future project.
It was shortly after Cléo was born, September 2021, and one of the images I had in mind was her, her skin in a kind of abstract landscape format. Maybe the film would be called 'My Giant Baby' or something like that. But there wasn't really enough substance in the idea alone.
Then we moved, and our new place is next to the train tracks. Our old place was also next to the train tracks - but the difference is that freight trains come by our new place, and the intensity of the freight train piqued my interest.
During the last year I'd found an old 300mm lens in the back rooms of the HFBK camera rental, and done a few small shots with it, but now combined with the macro lens possibility I thought it would be fitting to try and merge a super macro image with a super tele image.
Macro : Baby
Tele : Train
Also a nice first project to do at home, during the first months of parenthood, in winter, during a pandemic.
I filmed at the beginning of December '21 and am almost done editing and writing now, at the end of January '22. This is always an exciting and tiresome time - having already come up with the (vague) idea and shot the footage I now need to come up with the glue so to speak, the text.
I never write my texts beforehand. I will often have snippets written down in various places, written before and during shooting, but I don't try to presume that I will know what will actually come to be filmed even if I have a fairly concrete idea, as is the case in this project. There is always a puzzle at the end, and now it just needs to be put together - if only I could see all the pieces!
The final step of post-production is just as important as the steps prior, especially in the creative sense, by this time the film has had time to steep, and I've gotten to know my thoughts better. But it is never easy getting them out of my mind, on to paper, and spoken.
UPDATE 10.07.22 - A train of though for a train driver / Full Film
