Misplaced - Test Bed

This is a link to a clip from a test film which Rick and I have been developing in anticipation of our real moving image piece on the Thames Estuary. This is my rendering of the footage we shot. It was filmed at a local site called Bodenham Lake which used to be a working gravel pit until the mid 80's and it is now a nature reserve. There are still remnants of the site such as concrete aprons and slabs and rows of uniform trees, planted to block out the chaos of industry and destruction on this once precious meadow. The River Lugg which runs alongside the land, left handy deposits of gravel in the land and it was originally excavated by hand until it became worked by machinery.It has a kind of faded beauty to it and an oddness. The manmade lake is now like a Karl Stockhausen electronic performance piece with the multiple bird sounds which rise and fall, echoing around the flat spatiality of carved land. I think Rick summed up very well what our intentions with this particular test film were in the previous entry (26/06/12 - Bodenham Marshes). It was never intended that we come with a tight script, narrative or bunch of ideas that would be self explanatory. We are aiming to approach the final ED film on the Thames Estuary with a sensitivity to the space, trying to work in a more responsive manner, absorbing the nuances and letting the delicate details of the landscape emerge. At the moment it feels like there is an urgency to complete this sooner than rather than later, with the disastrous idea of the area being threatened for the development of an airport. Of course we inevitably bring our own back stories into play, our individual perceptions. It is almost impossible to remove such stains. I think of it rather like the Stan Brakhage films with those translucent marks painted onto the film strip by hand. It's hard to erase such marks. I'm still thinking of ropes by the way. And drawings.... Link for Stan Brakhage - Dog Man Star http://youtu.be/mTGdGgQtZic