The lead-up to shooting the footage with Alex and Chynnae was quite exciting. We had no idea what we were going to shoot. Robin suggested to pursue a theme, but as we didn’t really have enough time to make an executive decision, we improvised, knowing we had the security of using material from the other groups if our footage wasn’t useful.

We shot practically all our material on Victoria Street. It was busy, and there was a lot of material. We shot a few things; plants, buildings, traffic, the shadows of passerbys. We didn’t opt to use a lot of camera movement as we agreed it would be somewhat of a distraction; we wanted the sole focus to be on the subject.

After gathering and watching over all of the available material, I saw a lot of similarities in the content. This was obviously because we all shot in practically the same location, and therefore had similar choices at our disposal.

I decided my idea to pursue would be the natural world versus the constructed world. Maybe not ‘versus’, but line the two up alongside each other and create some kind of contrast. I would do this by showing something natural (a la flowers/trees), fading to black, then showing something constructed (a la buildings), before fading to black and starting the process over again.

Each shot (except for the last) is similar in length. They are timed and accompanied by a musical score. The score, created by my friend, is a piece of classical music (natural) that has been distorted through production (construction).

The last shot takes up about double the time I had used in the previous shots. I wanted to change the formula I had been using. It is a shot that focusses on some kind of construction box, before moving to a crane and following it as it lowers. I ended with this and increased its length (in comparison to the other shots) for two reasons. One, because I am obsessed with the cinematography in Hitchcock’s and De Palma’s cinema, and this shot is something you would see in those films (unnecessary and irrelevant in the context of my film but I get great satisfaction from it). And two, because it’s symbolic of the constructed world taking over (via the time I allotted for each shot) the natural world.

After watching it over a few times, I opted not to shoot any more footage. It was unnecessary, and despite the footage being just okay, I enjoy the imperfect aspect of the shots and think it suits the form and content of the film.