Week 6: Juliette

Cinematographer

This was our fifth film and that means the specific roles we had been swapping each week ended up landing on those people who had been thus far avoiding them. The pressure of letting others down while you try a role you are less sure of or don’t have much experience with building over the weeks. I was looking forward to getting the chance to be Cinematographer though perhaps a little nervous if I would be able to do a good enough job having not used the cameras since December.

I was especially excited about the prompt, and the fact that we had an extra week with ‘Reading Week’ in between. I borrowed a camera to practice with for the week and was looking forward to getting some secondary footage to make our montage as uniquely our own creation as possible.

Korneliusz was Director and I really loved his idea of telling the Albert Camus’ interpretation of the Sisyphus myth crossed with an Artist at work, getting a block and then again getting back to work. This was exciting to me on several levels. It told the Sisyphus story in a way I had not heard yet before. Something a lot more relatable and human. Not pure suffering but as life in balance. Also, I absolutely loved the direct comparison of hard physical labour with the work of an artist. As an artist, having to justify for my entire life that what I did was work, I felt vindicated in a way to get the opportunity to unapologetically depict it as hard work.

After the weekend we got together to discussed how and where we would film it. We decided, with the two very different locations, it would be better to try to film the Sisyphus footage on a separate day to the Artist in his home. We arranged with the group to film on Saturday with Aaron acting as both Sisyphus and as the Artist to make the parallel more obvious and more figurative. Less of a physical representation of Sisyphus but that it could be in the Artist’s own imagination and how he sees himself. Unfortunately, Aaron was unable to film on Saturday so Pettrus was roped into acting as Sisyphus. I had found a rock to pretend to push and planned out several shots including one to make the rock appear to roll and roll away, disappearing down the hill.

I had also scouted for places to film on Constitution Hill for the ‘walking back down’ scene. We ended up running out of time as we didn’t get to start as early as planned and I had an appointment to get to so some of the shots were rushed and not exactly where I had hoped to film, at the top of the hill, as we didn’t have time to walk all the way up.

On Monday, we had a very relaxed and productive film shoot at my house for the Artist’s scene. We have come to work very well together over the weeks, though we did from the start it only got better as we get to know each others strengths and styles.

There was quite a lot of footage to choose from between the second unit footage I had collected during reading week, the Sisyphus shoot and the Artist at home. Not as many of the shots I had hoped would be actually ended up in the final edit but since the course has been cut short due to the Corona virus and I didn’t get the chance to take on the role of editor, with the permission of the rest of the group, I am working on my own cut.

The lesson of the week has been swallowed up by the turn of events since, I just wish we could have known at the time this would be our last film as I think it could have been truly superb with everyone’s full effort that would have been given to a final film. Thinking of it now just makes me want to cry with frustration and impotence.

Read my final blog post here.