Hi Simon I like this, in parts. It has moments of intense beauty and it bursts with ideas, some of which seem to me to work more successfully than others. I've been looking at some of your other work - in particular
'Park House' http://www.vimeo.com/17226732 and 'Big Moth' http://www.vimeo.com/17198361 which seem to me to be quite incontrovertibly triumphant. I think what underpins this success for me is that these pieces are both looser & wilder in their construction and more intense in their content. In 'The Ship' the quasi-narrative form means less poetry per minute plus all the traps of unevenness (and to some extent cliche) that using performers brings. Frankly, I'm not sure how much is gained by the "narrative" thread - it is still fairly opaque and I wouldn't have guessed, without your gloss on the vimeo page, that it is "A film about an artist with a dilemma. A poetic take on split personality and narrative breakdown." What seems to me makes for more powerful and unified work in the other two is that the glue is your beautiful writing and (not to be underestimated) extraordinarily charismatic speaking voice, combined with a superb visual sense... they are *precisely* audio visual lyric poems... I can see that this could feel unsustainable over a greater length, like that of 'The Ship' - the lyric approach could begin to feel overcooked over more than about three minutes (although this never stopped Brakhage). I wonder whether the longer work needs more "scaffolding" - longer rehearsal periods, more precise scripting, even , dare I say, storyboarding ( although I can see the huge amount of work that went into it as it stands). warmest wishes michael --- On Thu, 5/26/11, Simon Mclennan <[email protected]> wrote: > From: Simon Mclennan <[email protected]> > Subject: [NetBehaviour] a film called The Ship > To: "NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity" > <[email protected]> > Date: Thursday, May 26, 2011, 5:42 PM > A film I made - I would be interested > in feedback from anyone on net > behaviour. Its about 6 minutes long and follows a sort of > narrative. > > http://www.vimeo.com/17199370 > > Incidentally this film was accidentally stolen by thieves > from my > flat twice during editing- two separate times on two > separate > computers- now there's a chance for you. > The first part is shot at Furtherfield Gallery, kindly lent > to me for > a couple of hours by Mark and Ruth some time ago. > > thanks, > > Simon > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
