the stone they lay
Film. Reflections. City of London. Public Art.
Throughout this project's lifecycle, I have had my expectations challenged across all areas of development. Because of this, it is helpful to frame this reflection through the lens of expectation devoured by the reality of experience. With this foundation, I hope to give insight into my workflow throughout these stages.
When working, I try to adopt a double diamond approach, which describes a two-stage workflow of the first diamond 1.a) diverging to understand the idea with 1.b) converging to better define the landscape; and the second diamond 2.a) diverging to develop the idea and 2.b) converging to deliver. This is a framework used in the tech world where I worked and learned that approach.
My initial idea was slim in concept but deeply rooted in history. I chose to base my work on the stone benches installed throughout the St Paul’s area across 6 sites. These benches were extracted from the Embankment wall, which hides the sewage underneath - a feat in city planning. After stumbling on this history, I found myself drawn to effects and sounds. With each project, I decide on an approach to execute quite early on. I do so by researching the effects archive: eyecandy. I also look to references, like Felipe Esparza Pérez, 2023, Cielo Abierto, which follows the life of a Peruvian father working in the land of volcanic stone. His work blends traditional craft with technological advancements in areas like 3D objects and CAD design. I took my inspiration from this, knowing that I wanted to blend old craft and new tech.
From experience, successfully executing an effect can take away from the precious time required to develop a concept or an edit. So in choosing an effect early on, I expect to prototype each one to determine the most feasible pathway moving forward. The effects I chose to test were a hyperzoom, 3D bisection of earth; whip pan transition, and some way to animate the inanimate blocks of stone.
Regarding the sound, I was immediately drawn to John Smith, 1996, Blight, where soundscapes create a sense of displacement and Ron Fricke, 1992, Baraka, which blends world sound with epic music to induce a meditative state in the viewer. I wanted to use sound similarly, by creating a sonic connection to the stones across different sites. Equally, I was keen to use the noise of traffic as a way to transition between the different sites. I noticed the connections to journey through textural motifs in Stan Brakhage, 1964, Dog Star Man. Perhaps using the sound of traffic as the SFX for the whip pan to create a connection to the journey between the different sites.
I encourage thinking big in ideation, testing, and then cutting ideas that no longer work. So my first step involved shooting a quick test. I soon discovered that the whip pan and zoom-in created a motion blur effect when the shutter speed was quite low. This sparked a new idea of shooting the stones with a low shutter speed so that passers-by in motion become phantoms, whilst the inanimate stone remains concrete. This I believe, worked well. I also discovered that I would not be able to get a close focus on the stone with the stock zoom lens – it was time for a macro. Surprisingly, I also discovered that my tripod was far too tall for this project and did not allow the low height required to shoot at the eye level of the block. I was able to use my photography tripod, which could get much lower. I also decided that it would be useful to collaborate with a sound designer, Thomas Crowley from the Sonic Experience studio, to guide the film work.
Having ironed out some uncertainties regarding the VFX and SFX. I now had a clearer vision for the direction of the film. Though not yet a clear concept. It became apparent that I needed to shoot the stones in such a way that I could create unity across sites. I needed to capture high-quality audio, which could mean capturing ambient sound and/or surface sound.
I set out to shoot, trekking to St. Paul’s area at 8 am to capture the stones during golden hour and with a medium rush of passers-by. I noticed something on that day, as I was lining the shot up for the zoom-in. As I got closer to the stone, I noticed a puddle of water on its surface. This puddle reminded me of the sewers, it reminded me of the stone’s origin, and so I rushed to the shop to prepare a bottle of water. Returning to submerge parts of the stone to its elemental twin. By doing this, I realised that my film needed to focus on water and earth, fluid and hard. By playing with this duality throughout the film and framing effects, sound design, and poetry along these lines, I would be able to express the significance of these benches as they relate to the Thames. This was a helpful realisation as in the discovery stage of the project, I felt that my expansive ideation amounted to no real end. But through this simple dichotomy, I was now able to build a narrative from simple but well-rooted foundations.
Though I deemed the initial shoot to be a success, after returning home and viewing the footage on Premiere Pro, I started to notice that I had not held the shots for long enough. Where the shots were composed and exposed correctly, they lacked longevity and would often fly by after 15-30 seconds. I think that shooting in public settings can create anxiety around disturbing passers-by. Or perhaps there’s agitation with shooting something that does not move, as you hold the shot, you stand in anticipation waiting for something to happen, or move, or dance – before you know it, your imagination starts to run wild, fabricating action. This feels like a symptom of the 21st century.
Moving forward, however, it was of vital importance that I return to shoot the stones and hold the shot. I set out with a notebook and timer in hand, ready to hold shots for 5- 10 minutes. My initial tests meant that I knew which stones required more screentime, which made the second shoot go far more efficiently. This was my biggest lesson. I think that starting this course, I was used to shooting B-roll in an interview setting, where a morsel of time spent on the subject would suffice for the edit. In the documentary approach, this does not work. So my learning was truly a morphing of styles, an adoption of a new workflow.
Granted that now the length of shots was sufficient and the FX limited to the most feasible (conceptually relevant). I now had a handful of assets to manipulate. I had written a poem for this project, which naturally meant starting with the arrangement of the poem alongside images. Under the recommendation of Thomas Crowley, we decided to record the voiceover line by line. By doing this, we created space between each line, which gave us room in the edit to better manipulate their placement. Though a poem was written, that is not to say that it would perfectly fit the structure of the film. Luckily, I had experienced this in the past, which allowed me to diverge away from poetry for spoken presentation and converge to poetry for presentation in film.
The poem in the film ended up being about 6 lines or so, whilst I had written around 30 lines of poetry. In this edit, I intended to animate the stone with a voice connected to the folk of Britain. In the first edit, I performed a Gandolf-like voice animation of the stone; I would pair this audio with shots of the stone and shots of the Thames, as it was talking about the Thames. I think following this path took me down a road of overcomplexity. I think that my references. Mati Diop, 2024, Dahomey and Sin Wai Kin, 2023, Dreaming the End. took quite a literal approach to give the inanimate new life, but in my project, this did not work.
During this editing process, I heavily leaned on Eisenstein’s view that “cinema [i]s a factor for exercising emotional influence over the masses” (Taylor, 39-49). With this in mind, I aimed to keenly listen to the views of my classmates and tutors regarding the affective power of my initial edit. I discovered that the Gandulf-like voice created a sense of humour, and felt performative, which was not my intention. Some shots were confusing, though super clear to me; others failed to reveal a clear focus as spectators found their eyes darting to traffic, particularly with the upside-down Waterloo bridge. I needed to manipulate my images further to invoke a sense of wonder and curiosity, moving away from confusion and humour. I decided to apply subtle blurs on parts of the image that were not relevant. I also simplified my voiceover, removing the Gandolf-like voice and leaning on the words of tutor Ed by saying the simplest line in the whole film ‘They were the walls of embankment.’ By doing this, I was able to create space for the sound design to create a soundscape that combined the cacophonic church bells with hydrophone recordings of the water, contact mic recordings of passers-by, and subtle EQing to reduce competing frequencies.
This project has reminded me that film production is a game of to and fro. We might have an idea nicely carved out, but we should be prepared to throw that out the window. It has been helpful to move across stages of the project with the double-diamond framework in mind, but it’s important to highlight that a lot of the success in this project involved adopting a non-judgmental mindset. I needed to create a safe space for my ideas to flow at the initial stage, despite any uncertainties and confusion. I needed to adopt an empirical mindset when prototyping effects. Finally, I had to adopt a sculptor's mindset to manufacture the right images in alignment with the emotional impact on the viewer.
Works Cited
Brakhage, Stan, director. Dog Star Man. 1964.
Diop, Mati, director. Dahomey. 2024.
Fricke, Ron, director. Baraka. 1992.
Kin, Sin Wai, director. Dreaming The End. 2023.
Pérez, Felipe Esparza, director. Cielo Abierto. 2023.
Smith, John, director. Blight. 1996.
Taylor, Richard. “S. M. Eisenstein: Writings 1922-34 Selected Works.” London British Film Institute, vol. 1, 1988, pp. 39-49.