For the past six months I’ve been running a regular monthly beginners photography course over in Runcorn. It’s an older group, originally formed to support men who were suffering with anxiety, over time the group has expended to anyone with an interest in photography.
I structured each session around a particular technique beginning with exposure with month one followed by composition, flash, basic editing and last week, simple Cyanotype prints.
It’s been great to watch the group develop – we split each session into a mixture of theory and practical experiments which seemed to suit everyone’s different needs. Some members of the group are a bit more advanced in some areas, and we happy to support others with less experience.
The Cyanipe session was fun – we’re going to continue this next month and then plan in some basic editing sessions. I’m expecting great things from this group in the future so watch out.
Testing out some small scale multimedia interactions around the work I’ve been doing with the Friends of Rimrose Valley Country Park in North Liverpool. National Highways would like to build a four lane highway right through the middle of the park to service the port of Liverpool.
This test work aims to look at what would be lost, using Cyanotype prints to represent local people in their changing environment.
I was commissioned to produce some new work for the newly opened Shakespeare North Theatre in Prescott to tie into the ‘Serious Nonsense Festival’, part of Knowlesy’s Borough of Culture year.
I developed these two pieces around the nonsense poems of Edward Lear as well as celebrating the newly opened theatre. You can find out more about the festival at the link here.
Rehearsed over Zoom and filmed on Saturday 5th December 2020 in one day around central Liverpool locations. A collaboration with Movema and Unlock The Box.
Over Lockdown I was lucky enough to work with TransCreative Arts Festival to launch the 4th Trans Vegas 2020 as a digital event. I worked with an amazing team of people online, editing interviews and creating short trailers.
It was great to work with Alex Hewitt again who did an amazing job supporting all the artists with essential equipment.
It was a real achievement for TransCreative to have put this together in such a short period of time and with limited resources. You can catch the festival online from this link.
A new body go work by U.S born artist Alexis Teplin premiered at the Bluecoat in Liverpool in October 2019 in her first major UK exhibition.
I worked with Alexis to create the film ‘The Workers’ which was exhibited as part of the exhibition. Alexis wanted to document the creation of a large wall mural, treating the workers as performing artists and we achieved this over two days using clean jump cuts to show the passage of time.
We’ve been continuing with our #cameramoves experiments over at MDI studio for a few weeks now. It’s been great working with the different groups who have been open and interested in our experiments and it’s been fantastic working with Jennie Hale to develop the idea.
I was initially nervous about how people would take to the idea – it’s an unusual concept, crossing movement and camera work but everyone we have worked with so far has really run with the idea.
Marketing the open call out sessions proved harder that anticipated, mainly I reckon because we are working with two different disciplines, film making and performance. These genres are usually kept separate, so bringing them both together in an experimental workshop may have made some people wary of getting involved. Once people are able to see how the process works and the collaborative nature of it, they got it.
It’s been particularly interesting working with the different age range and seeing what people make of the opportunity. With each group you can really feel the concentration in the room after shouting ‘Action’.
Camera Moves
There’s also been lot’s of interesting discussions around how it feels to be creating something in a room with so many cameras. It seems that when lot’s of people are filming, it takes the pressure off – it’s impossible to avoid the camera – it’s everywhere, so you just have to go with it.
What has been interesting is taking the footage from each of the sessions and mixing them up. As most of them have been shot in the same location, it looks as though everyone has been performing together.
We’re having a final showcase event this Friday 5th July at METAL in Liverpool from 6pm – 8pm to show some of the footage we’ve collected and chat about our findings. We’ll also be running another workshop with live music provided by Germanger – it’s free – you should come – and you can book tickets here.
Last year, I was lucky enough to do a short ‘Time & Space’ residency at METAL in Liverpool which I used to explore ideas I had been floating around for a while based on connection, loneliness and solitude and how mostly the idea of being alone is regarded as something to fear.
I think I’ve always been a bit of an introvert so one of the things that attracted me to filmmaking was it enabled me to dip into new worlds and collaborate with different people while remaining safely at a distance behind the camera. In fact, I have often thought of the camera as ‘The Shield’, a way to be part of something while remaining at a safe distance.
As the residency came to a close, one of the ideas I chose to develop (with METAL’s generous support) became ‘Camera Moves’. The concept is a simple one. Everyone involved has a camera and is either filming each other or a particular performer/event. I’ve filmed performances and music gigs before as part of a team, trying to keep each other out of the frame – there’s a certain amount of excitement and energy that goes into that collective approach. This is different – it’s about keeping everybody in the frame, no hiding. It’s an attempt to break down barriers between filmmaker and subject, audience and artist.
I also wanted a quick turn around time for watching the completed film, so rather than use conventional editing techniques, I’ve been working with live editing software Isadora which uses a database to hold the footage (rather than a timeline) and where clips can be selected in different random ways, such as audio or movement.
I thought it would be good to collaborate with someone skilled in movement and dance and I approached Jennie Hale at Taciturn who was keen to get involved. We then put the project to the Arts Council and we’ve been given a small grant to develop the idea and run a few small workshops. Our first session at METAL proved fruitful, just in terms of testing out the tech and how feasible this all was, but also just in terms of how it felt.
Some of the things we noted during the tests were:-
When everyone has a camera the energy in the room becomes very concentrated and about chance encounter.
People tended to explore the environment but were generally respectful of each others space.
We were all trying to create some form of creative visual connection.
There was some interesting discussions with regards to how much time we spend looking at our devices rather than at the real world.
If you are wearing a cameras such as a GoPro, the experience is completely different to using one hand held.
Watching the live edit is very addictive, there’s some often beautiful moments that may never be repeated.
Next week, we are running a couple more free workshops at MDI, one of them being an open session, so if you want to come along, book a slot now at the link below. Be interesting too see how this develops with different groups.
I filmed this Winter Solstice event on 21st December last year in Formby, working again with Artist Laurence Payot. A strange but rather beautiful way to end the shortest day.
