Serendipity is totally a thing.
What we want to learn, what we want to investigate and the results that we procure are not often the same.

I wanted to shoot Karen, at a bar, climbing over people to leave. To exit. However it was not meant to be. If money was not an issue I’m sure that something could have been sorted out but here we are working with constraints, and that is not a problem – it’s really a gift, it prompts creativity and teaches one flexibility. The space I wanted to use – the pub we often frequent (so as to work in a familiar and relaxed environment) was not able to permit us to work in the space, and stressing about not getting anything done I decided to just come up with something on the fly. Here’s my brief synopsis:

Karen is waiting, obviously looking for someone. She receives a text that reads “I’m not coming”. She exits abruptly.

The footage is grainy. They kept turning off lights. You have to work within limitations. Certain degrees of control were lost. I feel like this really tested my flexibility – and my patience. I had to work in conditions that I am not comfortable with. Again things had to be prepared on the fly. Some of this worked out for the better: the dark, the handheld camera work (and having Alex shoot it). Some of it didn’t, the rowdy people drinking in the corner, the lights that kept going on and off.

The levels and the layers came directly from one of my previous walk banks (hey something DID come in handy). I chose the stairs because I thoughts they would be a good challenge and they would enable some interesting coverage. I got pretty lucky in that respect.

Something else amazing happened – in one of the takes, she turns around, as if changing her mind to leaving. It would have been amazing had the camera held on for a while, and I like to pretend that this was all planned and constructed exactly that way. But it wasn’t, and some of the best stuff comes out of stuff that isn’t planned and isn’t prepared. So I’m lucky that I got what I got.

Karen, not in heels, has a slight change of composure. Her vigor is still clear yet without heels she loses a small element of commandment of the shot. (I would so like to do it again and ask her to do it in heels, or to have had that as an option when we were shooting, however I am conscious of  how much I can ask these volunteers to do and I do not in the least want them to fell like they are being overworked)

I’m interested in looking at the movement and the composure of the figure in the film. How can that be changed/influenced? How much can I push the bar before I taint my ‘actors’ with knowledge and consciousness of what is going on and that the study is equally on them and their actions?