The assignment was tough.
Take your best camera… mount it somewhere stationery… frame up your subject in macro… and shoot for exactly one minute.
Sounds easy doesn’t it?
Well it’s harder than it looks.
The Vimeo Weekend Project – One Minute of Contemplation required 60 seconds of rolling film shot in Macro with no editing… no dubbed in soundtrack… no nothing in fact. Just the raw footage as it occurred in one captured continuous moment of time.
Simple!
Okay… so first of all I got the brainwave to set up the camera in the shower.
I know that sounds a bit odd [grin]
But let’s face it… it’s a place we all know pretty well.
And besides… I have long admired the light that bounces off the shower rose at that time of the morning! [grin]
So.
That’s where I started.
And here’s the result.
Shower Take 1 from Jean Burman on Vimeo.
After 5 takes with alternate singing/humming/silence/and shuffling bottles of shampoo I abandoned that and went back to something I’m a bit more familiar with. That’s not to say I don’t know the shower [very well]… it’s just that standing in the shower fully clothed for half the morning wasn’t producing anything much more than wrinkly fingers LOL
So.
I thought I’d try my hand at capturing a 60 second watercolour demo instead. Remember… no sountrack… only background noises. I thought long and hard about that… and finally realised that I could in fact use music… just as long as it wasn’t dubbed into the project!
I love how this is making me think LOL
Good.
Progress!
I set up the tripod and mounted the camera onto it trying lots of different angles to get as macro as I could without losing focus. And remember… no editing allowed… so it couldn’t be filmed ‘out’ and cropped ‘in’ later. And the music had to be playing exactly in the right spot so it would finish “somewhere meaningful”…. [man I'm pretty sure they make pills for this sort of thing LOL]
Anyway.
So far so good.
I did a small sketch and filmed several 60 second segments focussing initially on painting the eyes. But then the rest of the picture made no sense. So I settled on finishing the mouth instead.
I have no idea why/how or when Desiderata came into the picture… but it just happened to be in my iTunes library… and it seemed like a good idea on this random Tuesday morning in the scramble to meet the midnight Monday night [New York time] deadline!
Here’s the result.
Paint 1 – One Minute Of Reflection from Jean Burman on Vimeo.
I kind of liked it. But it frustrates me that the music stops where it does… and I sure do want to finish that ear (((chuckles)))
5 min sketch [unfinished]
LEAVE A NOTE – let me know what you think or just say hi if you like
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Not quite with this one .Maybe I don’t have the techy knowledge and just happy watching you slosh paint on with a sure and confident hand ……….. I did wonder about the last dark blobs on the lips andthen they settled in …my old eyes again !
Keep on going allowing meto catch up ……….sometime huh?
Hugs E
Thanks Elinor
I think it was Jan Kunz who got me started putting those dark blobs in the corners of the mouth. Something to do with creating the illusion of a dental arch but I don’t remember much about it now. It takes guts to paint in watercolour [as an artist you know what I mean] but committing it then onto film as well a person’s got to be nuts LOL x
Well that’s something different for sure, Jean. Not sure if the shower scene was going anywhere…you worked that out. I can see you are more at home with the paint…and it shows…fine job.
be good to yourself
David
Haha thanks David
I guess the exercise was designed for the purpose of going nowhere. What they asked for was one minute of contemplation. The shower to me is a place of contemplation… some of my best ideas are hatched there in and out between the shampoo bottles (((LOL))) I think it works for the purpose but I wasn’t happy with the standard of filming. My Sony handycam wasn’t quite up to the job but I didn’t think I should prop the DSLR in the shower LOL
Oddly enough I was only one of a few who realised that you could add music by simply playing it in the background. Many of the clips were filmed in silence. That surprised me. Music is such an intrinsic part of who I am I simply couldn’t imagine anything without it.
Thanks for your comment David
you made me think harder about what I was trying to achieve… sometimes the ideas are there and you never quite flesh out “why”
Love to watch you paint!
Thanks Galen