A rather uncreative title for this blog post aside, I’ve had a few moments of reflection in the past few weeks when it comes to filming and this course and all of that. Firstly, I think I’d like to discuss accidents and like accidents in filming or like, unintended moments in filming. Last night, I went to the Ocean Party show at Howler, a band that have a very special place in my heart and following the passing of a dear friend of mine who was in the band, they are doing a final series of farewell shows as they move on from the band into other ventures, so as to respect Zac’s legacy
And some moments happened during the show which I felt obliged to film, which are featured in this embedded instagram post, the second one, of my friend Stef glimmering in this neon yellow light that is just so wonderful, singing along to a song, and it looks great merely because she’s standing in the right place at the right time and I’m standing in the right place at the right time to be filming it. I guess this isn’t as unintended insofar as it is a happenstance coincidence, but it was a nice moment to capture. But then when the Ocean Party started playing, their song Head Down has a very wonderful saxophone outro and I knew I had to film Liam as he started to play it, but then my iPhone Camera completely, unintentionally and through no fault of my own decided to get out of focus completely as he begins to start playing the sax, and it looks quite good. I feel like unintended moments like these really suit what Small Things can lead towards, in that we all could start to, as we capture more footage and begin to shoot these mini-projects laden with constraints, more unintended moments could pop up, and I reckon they’re nice ways to shoot beyond this static, optimal resolution optimal quality, static content that is starting to pop up more and more.
It might be something I try to explore as well when I go to more of these shows next weekend, as each show I’ve been to has been equal parts beautiful, sad, enjoyable, a wholly emotional experience.
Secondly, I’ve been thinking about Christian Marclay’s The Clock and something my friend mentioned the other day as the perfect embodiments of the application of constraints in film. My friend mentioned that they’d be compiling a list of movies that they’d watched that featured scenes of people brushing their teeth as these films were intimate in their nature as you only brush your teeth in front of people you loved, and I think both of these filmic constraints, at least in the edit suites are really interesting premises to consider. It is truly unbelievable and imcomprehensible that someone was about to create a 24hr film that is a watch, using shots/scenes from movies in the past and I think there really is a place for these filmic constraints to be explored. I think for me, if it was to try to scour films for something I might bring myself back to my commerce degree roots in the marketing sector and I would want to find all the Coca Cola featuring scenes in films. Might take me the rest of my life though, but it’s about the taste.