So before filming this coming week, I wanted to touch on why I chose to shoot at Royal Park, and then also discuss Scott Macdonald’s work and how it impacts my film.
As I said in my previous post, I chose Royal Park for my assignment. I did this because I think it has the perfect scenery surrounding the train station. There is a big park, a golf range and lots of green/leafy trees to shoot. There are also some great views of hills/cliffs/looking back at the city that could really add to the piece. Convenience is also pretty important in case I need to do reshoots, and its only 1 station away from my house.
Something we talked about in class today also quite struck me. In Macdonald’s “Avant-Doc: Eight Intersections” he talks about the lumiere brothers and their “City Symphones”. This is sort of along the same lines as my assignment, and something I definitely continually think about exploring for my next and final assessment. Exploring city life through avant-garde filmmaking is a really interesting way to document a society. Rather than just producing a standard documentary talking about the city and its history, thinking more creatively about how you represent a city, town, suburb or anything can really help to build a narrative behind your film. Why are you cutting here, why are you including that shot, why is this clip important, why is that sound integral etc. Hopefully my piece can build upon this, and reflect something greater about the area its depicting. Its obviously reflecting upon the nature of industry/man imposing itself upon the natural, but I hope it also says something about us. It invites the audience to actually notice nature, something I think we really do these days, and it shows the man made trains as harsh agents imposing themselves upon the audience, limiting our ability to notice anything other than the trains themselves.
Reference
MacDonald, Scott. Film Quarterly; Winter 2010; 64, 2; Performing Arts Periodicals Database pg. 50