Relations. A film image by itself says a lot, but in many other ways it is quite mute. That Vine clip of a coffee cup, playing as it does with the autofocus and autoexposure of the iPhone’s camera, shows a particular cup and saucer and spoon with particular qualities. It is all description (notice the texture, hue, and light on the surface of the saucer, it’s tone, shape and the shadow). But it doesn’t ‘say’ much – it isn’t really yet narrating anything, it’s simply a coffee cup, saucer, and spoon. Add a title, and make that a part of the work (in this case “glow to orange”) and things change a bit. Now the title orientates the short clip with a little bit of direction and focus, it seems to be about simply the arrival of this particular orange, its intensity and appearing is perhaps more important than what it is, suggesting a certain sort of abstract relation to the thing, and the film. Perhaps it’s more poem than story?

Take that brief shot of a cup, saucer and spoon and if you placed it in relation to other shots, then things change dramatically. Surround it with other cups and I have a work, that at a minimum, I might take to be about cups. Or surround it with other things ‘appearing’ as brief intensities of colour, and I’m perhaps got a film that is thinking about colour (perhaps in the spirit of the Delauney’s.

Relations between therefore carry great force to change what we understand the shot to be about.

This week’s theme begins to consider what sorts of relations there might be between other things, and how these might be filmed. These tasks invite poetic interpretation and an effort to think from something else’s point of view.

• make a six to ten second clip that is about someone else, not from your immediate family – and film them in a way that describes who you think they are, without filming their face
• make a six to ten second clip that describes an object from the point of view of an animal in your home
• make a six to ten second clip that describes either air, sky, water, or earth, from the point of view of a plant
• in each clip you should only show the parts of things, not wholes

Technical

• each clip should be six to ten seconds in length (if you use Vine they will be six)
• editing can be done in camera, or after
• the video needs to be published into your blog (you can use vimeo, blip.tv, or embed them yourselves)
• there should be one video clip per blog post
• the source media needs to be available as H.264 video