i was meant to start on thursday but i missed the induction because stupidly i was bed bound. i've never used film before and although i am completely unfamiliar with the idea i decided that i needed to be brave and experimental in order to achieve the best reults. i'm writing some ideas of which shots and clips of the fottage i have that i'm going to use.
after thoroughly familiarising myself with and watching the black and white wedding video, i thought it was an interestng viewpoint to convey a success story, a struggle and a survival and the idea of a battle won. and then also having films from 60's and 50's from their children, the twins, which makes the concept of continuation and rejection or persecution more relatable. their descendents are their rebellion in a sense.
i showed the wedding film to my grandma also as she hasn't seen it in over 50 years. i invited the rest of the family over to view it with her also as i wanted to place and capture all her ancestory and the seeds she has sown, so to speak, the measure of her success is only tangible, visible or even obvious through her descendents. i videod and recorded her reactions.
she was more concerned with telling her audience (the family) who people in the film were and what they're doing now, whether they're alive or dead and what they meant to her, both now and at the time.
i think it worked quite well and was an appropriate way of documenting the transition process between now and then by having recorded her reactions. i may also interview her and find out her feelings and document them in writing, this also could be a useful way of finding out how she feels about the entire process (of life and survival).
the footage and sound i have of her and my family laughing and talking over the film corresponds time wise to the film itself, so when she shouts at something like ''oh there's uncle harry. shame about him not being here'' it might create a nice correlation if i overlayed the two pieces of gathered information, it could be a detailed account in her words, the protagonist, of the footage itself. i think this may be a suitable method of adding sound to the silent cinefilm, rather than finding seerate pieces of music and audio clips to layer over the film.
at first i wanted to use german music in parts where there was dancing in the video but without sound, and maybe even speeches made in germany during the 1940's but although this is also an appropriate use of audio i feel like the effect it creates is not as subtle and thought provoking and cosequently ''powerful'' and it may also be slightly too obvious as it leads the viewer/listener straight to the point, rather than them having to engage with the material to form a relationship with the subjects and form an opinion/emotional connection.
so, to start with i'm going to filter through parts of the film and decide which of the 14 minutes i want to use.
the first few frames/seconds of the film is a very scratched and bitty filming of the sign on the synagogue wall where the wedding ceremony took pace, it reads, '' if g-d lend thee wealth, exalt not thyself above thy fellow...for ye sleep together in the end.''the composition of the shot coupled with the interpretation and age of the film give it an eerie nature of wholesome goodness whilst also referring to life and death itself, it's quality, or lack of, adds to the message, where the edges have disintergrated and decayed, there are connotations to the death and destruction of culture and history.
to start the project with such a powerful image, piece of film, i feel like from there there has to be a certain 'pace' set. i don't want the film to run at normal speed, the speed at which it runs on a cine-projector, i'd like to slow bits of it down and allow the audience to extract as much character from the subjects as possible.
the next frame or section could possibly be a more livelier one but so much so that it also creates a larger than life itself feeling. if possible i want to find out if i can use final cut pro to slowly layer the ends of the two frames so that the first piece blurs out to slowly reveal the second which will be the end of the weddding video which also has this crackled and decayed quality of the husband and wife kissing.
i'd like to possibly experiment with playing this part backwards and maybe adding in ''scartches'' of my own to make the image stutter and repeat at places, like in the music video i found on youtube of a band call s amp.because the nature of the footage is of such a personal nature, i feel as though the most successful method would be to inject as much distance as possible, by manipulating the footage as much as possible while still conveying a timeline - a form of narrative.
i also want to play on the idea of the footage being ''old'' and found, again manipulating the concepts of decay and damage, mirroring and contrasting with the notion that none of the people present in the videos were directly harmed by the tragic events of europe, although a part of the overall ''plan'', in contrast, that they overcame and survived. this is the story that i think the audio overlayed on top of the footage conveys.
there are more ideas still to come but my induction for FINAL CUT PRO is starting now. be back soon.
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