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The making of Epitaphs |
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Revisiting the Past Reining in my ideasMost of my film work is undertaken in partnership with Sue Bence. Sue has worked with me for a number of years, going back to my pre-filmmaking days when I was writing and producing stage plays. Sue’s role is script editor, director and behind the camera when I have to step into the frame. There's just us doing everything as a crew of two. More importantly, before a single word of a script is written, something akin to a battle takes place in the form of discussions that can go on for months. In the case of Epitaphs, this started out under the heading of The Dee Project. Over time the idea was gradually distilled down to something manageable and Epitaphs was conceived. The River Dee as a subject turned out to be too vast and overwhelming to take on as a project in its own right. The inspirational momentWhen I first visited the beached ship The Duke of Lancaster, what came to mind was the line from Shelley’s poem Ozymandias: Look on my works ye mighty and despair. This gave the hook to hang the project on. Roughly the theme of: all things eventually come to an end no matter how grand the endeavour. Uppermost in my mind is a desire to communicate with the audience through the visual - the sound taking on the supporting role. I aspire to be a cinematographer rather than making TV style videos. With all my films Sue and I have an iterative approach to gathering images, writing the script and recording the narrative - constantly reviewing the film as it’s built and revising accordingly. Sometimes, although this didn’t happen with Epitaphs, the whole thing will be wiped from the editing software time-line and a fresh start made. The music is carefully chosen to match the mood of the images and it may take several hours of trial and error to find the right piece to match a particular scene. The last six lines of the Shelley poem Ozymandias forms part of the narration. I didn’t consider my voice good enough to deliver these lines consistent with the overall balance we were trying to achieve. We made contact with a local poetry reading group and went to several of their meetings. They arranged a special evening for us to film one of the members reciting the poem. Unfortunately this didn’t quite come up to the mark of the overall standard of the film, and that’s why I turned to You Tube and downloaded Vincent Price’s reading of the poem.
Research Time scaleLong before the conception of Epitaphs, many hours of footage had been taken at several locations on the River Dee Estuary over a period of two years. I was sure there was a film here somewhere amongst the stunningly atmospheric views and the rich history of the place. When eventually the idea for Epitaphs came along, this was just the start and a lot more footage had to be shot. Sue and I visited the beached ship on at least three occasions, and each time more graffiti had been added which led to continuity problems. During post-production I went back on my own to shoot an essential establishing shot. When I got there the footpath was closed for safety reasons. Sometimes filmmakers have to break the rules, ignore the keep-out notices and climb over barriers in order to get the job done. Vision and Sound - James Chalmers. LACI |