I headed down to Falmouth, Cornwall to visit with the manager of Mustard Works, Brandon Holloway, to explore how creatives can ensure they have a solid career after their degree. On one of the days I was there, we met up in St Ives to visit the local area and a few of the art galleries (which were amazing, read all about them in the Gallery Visits section!) and on the train, we came up with the challenge to find a place somewhere in St Ives and just film whatever we felt like and see what happens!
When the train stopped, we had a couple of hours of exploring before we cam across this little art gallery in Porthminster which overlooked the open sea! The gallery was built with old white stones and peeled paint woodwork, which I thought was just perfect for the film, so we settled and I gave free range to Brandon to come up with the concept for the film.
To film, I took a variety of angles into consideration in order to capture a few different perspectives of the dance being carried out by Holloway. For the Choreography side of things, Brandon had chosen to create a brief exploring how to define dance through the incorporation of everyday movements and the lengths to which movements can be classified as a dance move. The piece was so fun to film, but unfortunately I had no equipment with me at the time because all my camera stuff was back up another and this was a spontaneous day trip.
I then returned to the North, where I first tried to edit the video piece myself. I found this so difficult as, not only did I lack the skill to know how, I also lacked the software to do so. This is where got in touch with my Filmmaking friend, Amy Davey, who said she wanted to take the recorded videos to edit and piece them together. She talked me through the process of how she took the videos first chronologically, but then looked into particular repeated movements Brandon did, and matched them from different camera angles. This meant that there was a flow throughout the short film and after many hours of us working on it together, we had the final cut we were both really happy with it.
Next came the audio for it, for which I got in touch with a good friend of mine, Chase Miller, a musician I had previously worked with as I felt his style of music really fit with the piece at hand, and I was super excited to see what he’d come up with for this project. So I eagerly sent him the video we pieced together and within a few weeks, I received his response! As soon as it arrived in my inbox, I watched them both to see how they fit together,as it’s fair to say I was overwhelmed by how well things were coming together!
Overall, this being my first collaboration of this sort, I’m really pleased with the outcome and I’m really hoping to do another collab like this now that I have a better understanding of what I’ll be doing! The spontaneous nature of the day was super exciting too and I feel this is how I’d like to continue with more projects in the future, but next time with more better equipment and more time to look into how to film more effectively.
V E E L I S E K 