Bodenham Marshes Film - beginning a moving image aesthetic conversation'

Anna and I decided to visit Bodenham Marshes last Saturday. We had planned to try a few ideas for the ED film. Before going down to the site I spent some time looking at my own poetics and texts that I feel are linked to the work. Much of this is site specific or landscape-based.

In terms of my normal film-making practice this 'shoot' was very differently approached in terms of pre-planning. There was no storyboard or script. No treatment. I had only have a very abstract sense of what we were going to do on the day - which was exciting. I was thinking of certain structural modes of working e.g. using fixed lengths of camera movements in different directions, and also ways of mapping a space visually, but beyond that i was keen to let alot of the thinking work to be done by my 'back-brain' unconsciousness.

We knew we wanted to try out some techniques e.g. tracking and particular hand-held shots - but beyond that little else was decided. We did try some tracking with a dolly which a local film-making friend, Neil Oseman had lent me. But these didn't really work out - we wanted a very slow and very smooth movement that we couldn't really pull off to our satisfaction. We'll probably use some Hollywood Dolly tracks and dolly from a B'ham based company.

I did have one recurring approach that I wanted to try though - that of the camera hovering close to a figure as the figure explores an environment and bring it vividly to life. On the day this really became an interesting point of departure for both Anna and I. We tried this many times, using different Olympus prime lenses on my Panasonic AG-AF101 camera. It worked best when the camera hovered close to the figure - without revealing the face - it brought up alot of questions and interesting lines of enquiry, which I intend to investigate further.

I wanted to respond quite rawly to the place, and also leave an openness so that Anna and I could truly create an 'a moving image aesthetic conversation' at the site. Of course this could prove quite a dangerous thing to do, but this became a positive.

Later, looked at the footage from Saturday and really, really liked some of it - there were a few shots that I found very effecting - and I started to look forward to begin editing it. I have a poem which began speaking with the imagery, which was weird as I was hoping to record it on the day.

The early filming was very much spoilt by the tracks not doing what we wanted but it's helpful to look at the footage as it gave me some ideas of what we could achieve. A wide shot of the the landscape was particularly good. The main revelation was the footage of you walking through the landscape and then to the lake. Some of the shots really began suggesting some possibilities.

Anna and I both now intend to work on the footage from the day's filming seperately. 

Rick