Starry night, misty morning

Working out visual ideas for an upcoming film

One of the films I’m currently working on for Campfire Stories is structured around an interview. The topic is super interesting and the words coming out of the interviewee’s mouth are both profound and inspiring. But the challenge is that, visually, what we’re looking at is this gentleman, sitting in a chair, talking. Which gets a bit boring after a while. Therefore I’m looking for other visual layers for the film. So that once I establish that I arrive at my subject’s home and we say our hellos and sit down for the interview, the audience can get out of the realism of the thing and drift off into another universe; a place where they can really take in the meaning of what’s being said.

Method

And so I set out to test this idea I’ve been harbouring. Telescopes, stars and space comes up in a couple of different ways during the interview, and I think it might be fun to try to use those elements in the storytelling. I experimented with filming the night sky once before, so I have a pretty good idea of what my equipment (and I) am capable of.

So last night I packed my gear and biked down to the little dock near my house where I set up my camera on a tripod. Filming the night sky is a little different from regular filming, as each frame needs a really long exposure. So I set the camera to expose for 15 seconds and then duct taped the shooting button down (old-school). That way it’d continuously shoot a string of long exposures that I can later patch together. I then said good night to the camera, biked home and hoped that the battery would last through the night.

In addition to coming up with and filming beautiful sequences that’ll reverberate with the words in this story I figured it would be nice to braid some music into it also. I’m talking to exceptional pianist Ellen Molnia to see if we can work out a collaboration for this project.  Keeping my fingers crossed. The piece in the test clip is a tune called “Mr Darcy” from her latest album “Magical Melody Clouds Floating By” (check it out on Spotify).

More on this film, its visual elements, topic, main charachter and music to come soon…

Update: the film this post refers to is now released and can be seen here.