Editing the film in the Music Room, Merton College
Installation mockup of the completed film
“It's a wrap, folks. We can go home now.” Since the 1920s, filmmakers have been using this phrase when principal photography on a film set is concluded and the film is ready to go into post-production.
A year of filming along a stretch of the river Thames north of Oxford and around Merton College has almost finished. What lies ahead is a process that I love - editing or to quote the film editor Walter Murch “film construction”. Film editing is the most wonderful process. It requires disciplines at all levels and some hard truths. I first started filmmaking during my foundation year at Central St. Martins School of Art using a clockwork Bolex 16mm camera. I still have it. I had approximately 35 seconds of filming before the camera needed to be re-wound. A 100ft day light loading roll of film would allow me 2.5 minutes of filming. The exposed negative would then be sent for processing. I would take the exposed negative to a processing laboratory with companies such as Deluxe, Metrocolor and Technicolor. The processed negative, and a print of the negative, could then be collected a day or so later, thus the term ‘rushes’ or ‘dailies’. I would collect it, race back, open the film cans, take in the smell of newly developed film, and sit at a film editor in the dark and watch my endeavours. The first film I made was called the Wayward Bus and I edited it at the London Filmmakers’ Co-op in London.
Much has changed since then. I haven’t shot with film for several years now. What hasn’t changed though is the excitement of returning to review what you have shot. I see the actual filming as a process that provides the opportunities to be seized later during the edit. Editing now, at least for me, is no longer a hands-on mechanical process requiring a Catozzo film splicer, splicing tape, trim bins and most importantly a Steenbeck flatbed film editor. Some lament the passing of this process. But its legacy still exists. If you take a closer look within a digital non-linear editor, you will still find those original film terms associated with manual cut and splice editing.
My days of hands-on linear editing using a film splicer were short lived. I shot my graduation film on film but edited it digitally using Avid - then the leading industry digital non-linear (NLE) editor. There were and still are many routes through postproduction. Every film is different and so has different demands and needs. It can be a complex and expensive process and the advent of digital has not necessarily changed either. But now I can post produce a film to the point of delivery completely independently without necessarily engaging a third party. A familiar postproduction route at the time of my graduation film involved having your film negative optically scanned and transferred to a digital tape format. During this process, a colour grade would also have been applied. Today most cinema cameras are digital so there are no longer these intermediary stages to make the media ready for editing. My camera shoots a digital negative that is directly ingested into my non-linear editor. I no longer have film cans or tapes on my shelf, instead I have hard drives, lots of hard drives. I presently use Blackmagic’s Davinci Resolve as my non-linear editor. It’s a system that allows simultaneous access to several image processes that ordinarily used to be sequential. This allows me to determine a shots full potential early on as I can apply a colour grade, add visual effects, engineer audio, and edit all at the same time. I can now adjust an edit right up to the point of delivery. This is very different from the process of having to sign off the various sequential stages of post-production before proceeding.
The challenge of editing is determining what it is you want to say and striking a balance between opinion and neutrality. One of your obligations as an editor is to immerse yourself in the sensibility of the film to the point where you are both aware of the film’s smallest details and the film’s most important themes. When beginning an edit, I try not to be too smart too early and I try to develop the films overall arc - the ambition being to find visual and thematic harmonies within the whole jigsaw. There is a process of metering out the right amount of generative impulse and modulating that with the right amount of critical impulse and knowing when to say I’m not going to touch that right now, I’ll wait until I know more. It’s a process of orchestration - organising the images and sounds in a way that is interesting. Mysterious when it needs to be mysterious, and understandable when it needs to be understandable. I try at times to find ways to forge alliances between unlikely things, striking juxtapositions but I am always mindful that at the point of transition between one shot to another it’s important to know where the audience’s eye is looking. It’s important to carry the focus of the audience across the cuts as opposed to making them search for them. It’s important to sustain the illusion.*
Film is not like reading a book. The film only lasts as long as it takes to project it. What I hope to achieve in a film is to provoke an audience’s participation by requiring the audience to complete the ideas. I see the viewer as a creative participant. How each moment gets completed depends on the individual. What I find exciting is that each person sees their own version on the screen.
The assemblage editing of Remote Water has already begun with early experiments of sequencing and juxtaposition. There is still some filming to be done and only when that is complete will I start editing for real. I can’t wait to start and I very much look forward to returning to Merton and sharing the completed film. The film will be called Marginalia.
*See Michael Ondaatje book The Conversations
Otter at Godstow
At last, I’m back in my kayak and back on the water. Pushing out from the bank and being caught by the stream, followed by those first paddle strokes, was simply great. My kayak is named Bathsheba after Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd character. A name to conjure with and a reminder to myself to approach this project unconventionally. I have been filming the stretch of the Thames from Godstow to Kings Lock since November 2023 for my project Remote Water. These are the topographical bookends for my film - lock to lock.
I have a notion: what if you could lift out this stretch of water between the locks in its entirety and see it is a single living organism and considering it as that. Visually this reminds me of the non-terrestrial intelligence that the character Dr Lindsay Brigham encounters in James Cameron’s 1989 film The Abyss and the use of an experimental liquid breathing diving suit enabling diving to great depths. Our perspective of water is often a body to look into, or float on. Think of John Everett Millais’ painting Ophelia, 1851-2. In Michael Andrews’ painting Melanie and Me Swimming, 1978-9, the mechanism of suspension appears absent.
I have begun to learn the stretch of river between the two locks - its rhythms and importantly the natural life that inhabits it. I have watched its hypnotising flow from the bank for months. But now I’m in its stream I’m having to re-learn it. I’m seeing it now from the river’s point of view. The winter months have revealed some of its secrets. Fleeting glimpses of some its rarer residents have disturbed its otherwise metronomic rhythm. Of course, a sighting of an otter, albeit fleetingly, has been a highlight and a psychological lift during the wet and windy months. But I have also taken great pleasure and enjoyed the company from its more regular inhabitants. There is just something about waterfowl that can raise a smile.
I enter the water now with different intentions for the film. The idea has developed - I have new protagonists for the film, new angles to explore which I’m very excited about. This is what happens when you have the time and space for an idea to develop. At times I wonder if I can keep up with the river. It’s constantly changing and especially now. Spring has taken an unstoppable firm hold. Vistas that I discounted during the winter are revealing themselves under a new guise and views that I have grown familiar with are disappearing behind new growth. Soon much of the river will be invisible from the bank as the reeds grow high. The river will become a secret corridor - a world within a world. Months of being alone on its riverbank and at one with nature are being replaced now with the seasonal increase of human presence. It’s great to see so many people enjoying the river as a life tonic as the days have lengthened. I admit, I miss ‘my’ winter river. But it is of course not mine, it’s everyone’s to enjoy. And we are all the better for it. But please, please take your rubbish home with you!
Filming can be frustrating and it’s not without its challenges especially when your talent hasn’t read the script. The decision on where to film on any day is often based on an assessment of prevailing conditions. Godstow is dominated by South Westerly weather patterns. It’s a windy location with limited shelter. Wind and filming with long lenses present you with challenges. I previously mentioned the Cat’s Cradle Conundrum. In this instance the elements pulling against each other are wind strength (and whether it’s constant or variable), camera position, the focal length of the lens and whether the lens has image stabilisation. These are the variables in front of the camera’s sensor. The next variable, and the nemesis of every filmmaker (whose camera uses rolling shutter technology as opposed to having a global shutter) is the dreaded Jello Effect. This is a visual warping of the image and is created because the camera exposes progressively across the sensor for each frame exposed. An object that moves within the frame’s exposure renders itself distorted. A global shutter exposes the whole sensor in a single burst. You could ignore all these variables and rely on image stabilisation in post-production but it’s a digital process and can only work on what it’s given. But this is all well and good but, in the moment, when an Otter suddenly appears all of this is forgotten and just maintaining the Otter in the frame and in focus becomes your priority. I found myself recently willing a Swan to swim through my carefully composed frame in a particular way. Fortunately, Swan behaviour does allow for non-negotiated retakes and eventually the Swan obliged and gave me the shot I was looking for. It’s all swings and roundabouts.
It’s just not wildlife I’m having encounters with. I was talking to Sebastian on the access road to Kings Lock. He was lamenting the loss of the willows along the riverbank. Their branches providing perfect points of attachment for swings over the water. There are good reasons for pollarding a tree, but it can appear brutal to see. For Sebastian’s daughter, at least for her generation, she won’t be able to swing out across the river, let go and swim back to the bank. An alternative does exist - a frayed rope hanging from a pipe under Godstow Bridge. But all I can imagine here is a Banksy intervention. The thunder of the A34 above is just not the same as the sound of Skylarks suspended above. Skylarks are ever present in the meadows that straddle the river upstream of Godstow Bridge. There is a simple joy in listening to their song as they rise and fall in their invisible columns of air. Of course, pollarding is part of an ongoing programme of river management, I get that but why they couldn’t have left a single bough to swing from seems to be a missed opportunity. That single gesture would have gone a long way. Mind you whether you would want to be swimming in the river is another thing?
I have watched the water levels rise and rise over winter. I can still see the lines of flotsam way out into the meadows on either side of the river as makers of the flooding. But now the levels are receding. The balance has been tipped. The ground water is resolutely leaking back into the river. But it won’t be long before the lack of water hits the headlines!
A flooded and frozen Port Meadow
“A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”
Leonard Bernstein
As a maker, a filmmaker in my instance, as a piece of work develops so also will the questions it’s asking.
My mountaineering experience has taught me to play a game of consequences - a game of what happens if. A sobering question to consider even on the gentlest of terrains.
Filmmaking presents somewhat lesser consequences but nonetheless what both activities share is the constant necessity to ask the important questions as the process progresses.
My project Remote Water has asked some important questions of me. The process has seen an unveiling of an arts practice from within a filmmaking practice. I have ordinarily worked within the bookends presented to me by an artist, director, or client. The conceptual bookends offered have often been wide apart and I have often had complete freedom to visually interpret the space in between. Remote Water has offered me an opportunity to be more singular with my voice and determine what and where those bookends are placed. What is it I want to say and how do I want to say it. Is this current process of making asking me to define and differentiate an arts practice from a filmmaking practice.
My ongoing project Observations from Isfryn, soon to be installed in the foyer of the T.S. Elliot Theatre, also represents this singular voice. How do I want to immerse the viewer and represent the entanglement of both natural and human activity within a predominantly managed landscape.
I studied Fine Art Film and Video at Central Saint Martins - a bastion of the avant-garde. I remember watching Michael Snow’s La Région Centrale (1972), a three-hour meditation on a Canadian landscape established by a camera setup rotating around itself. The film represents a tradition of films that emphasise observation as a mode of engagement and aspire to achieve a hypnotic and contemplative effect on their spectators by equating their films’ screen duration with an uninterrupted, real time and actual duration.
I am mindful though of both the attractions and restraints of slow cinema (or contemplative cinema as its also known). I confess, I have spent many an afternoon in an empty cinema watching and losing myself in the long takes of the finest exponents of slow cinema. The films of Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky come to mind.
More than sixty years ago, the audience at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival found Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) outrageously slow and boring and protested against the film’s relaxed tempo by whistling and shouting “Cut!” during scenes where dead time and stillness presided over causal action. While the public denied and disowned the film, next day the festival jury felt obliged to make an announcement proclaiming the film as a modern masterpiece in support of Antonioni’s “cerebral and contemplative (as opposed to instinctual and dynamic) art film.”
I am also mindful of the words of the Canadian Naturalist and Filmmaker Bill Mason:
“I prefer painting, but film is just about the next best thing to taking it with me. The problem with film, you show it the way it is everybody goes off to sleep.”
I don’t think I necessarily need to worry about a Cannes audience, but Remote Water is developing and proposing some questions I would like to answer in the future.
But the big difference between the arts and mountaineering decision making is the need to maintain an element of enigma. This is what keeps the spectator inquisitive. Think of a Duccio painting of a Madonna and child if you want to see something completely enigmatic within an otherwise familiar iconography. But be aware of the virtuous artful aesthetic.
The thing that keeps a piece of art relevant for ever is if you can’t land it.
At this moment in time while making Remote Water it’s important to keep asking the questions but perhaps also keeping them at arm’s length.
The A34 crossing the Thames at Godstow
Apart from a few isolated days, since November river levels on the whole have prevented me from filming from my kayak. Even with the seeming invincibility of my dry suit I have on the whole kept my kayak out of the water. There are times to concede to powers greater than your own. In many ways this is the reality of filmmaking. Film production needs to adjust in response to what is actually happening on the ground (or in the river in my case) and if this necessitates a shift in strategy and theme then so be it.
I talked about the unpacking and the fragility of the idea in my opening talk at Merton. But once you have unpacked the idea what do you then do with its constituents?
Presuming you are not fundamentally changing the idea’s DNA, visualisation is a fundamental part of this process. I collect ideas. At any one time I’m gathering ideas and hanging them on an imagined rotary airer. This is my virtual sketch book. Presently the opening sequence of Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins 1961 film Westside Story; the painting A Surrey Landscape by Frank Dicksee; NASA’s re-entry of Orion returning from Artemis I; Nicholas Roeg’s 1971 film Walkabout and the book Another Way of Telling by John Birger are hanging on my rotary airer. I impose no hierarchy to the ideas at this stage and resist over conceptualising them. I’m just collecting and as with any washing line some of the ideas will be lost to the wind! At the very least the gathered ideas are a first step into a landscape of otherwise infinite possibilities.
I would like to say I don’t have a cookie cutter approach to filmmaking and I ‘always follow my arrow’, but I am aware of established effective mechanisms to storytelling that filmmakers use. What has always excited me about filmmaking (and the arts at large), is the formats flexibility - its kaleidoscopic ability to overlap and shift. As a filmmaker I like to stray from convention and offer a more oblique point of view - perhaps I feel it’s only necessary tell half the story! I do believe though, for the non-convention to gain a foothold, it needs to be a reaction to convention - to hear silence you need to be surrounded by noise. But if you choose to stray across the tracks in pursuit of convention or non-convention, always remember what side you came from?
With this in my mind when arriving at a location I will firstly attempt to bookend the idea of the film within the realities of that location. What is it in front of me that visually represents the themes of the film I am trying to make. How can I visually distil these themes through filmmaking techniques. But the world can look very different through a lens so much of the negotiation is often as much about removing superfluous information through a process of selective framing. As a filmmaker you are constantly negotiating these imperfections within the frame and strategizing the compromise while at the same time attempting to hold on to the idea. Perhaps filmmaking is about knowing when to tighten and when to loosen the reigns while still maintaining control and a purposeful direction.
I mentioned negotiating a location’s imperfections. I have been filming along the Isis above Godstow. This location though has its challenges. It’s difficult to ignore the A34 and A40 for example. They form both a visual and unavoidable audible backdrop to the landscape. Initially I attempted to remove the road through selective framing but as my ideas have developed for the film, I have discovered a means to embrace their presence. They are of course the Godstow of today and I’m not making a drama from an imagined time in the past. But their presence has required some careful management to maintain the correct balance within my narrative. So, embracing Godstow’s roads has been a leap of faith in some respects. They are intrinsically entangled in the landscape but how to represent them? There are many existing visual tropes to investigate. Of particular interest to me is the difference between how the road and river represent time passing (which will feature as a broader theme in my film) so I have been looking for a formula to visualise this. I have always embraced digital intervention to enhance a shot, but I have always felt, at least in my work, they should be invisible to the viewer. The removal of a distracting object from a shot would be a good example. Every location has its family of visual distractions and signs deserve a particular mention here. In this country we seem to have a propensity for inserting signs in the most unlikely places. Some make you wonder in their pronouncement of the bloody obvious! Ironically, it’s their high visibility that makes them easy to digitally isolate and replace with a pixel average that surrounds them. Perhaps my films should carry their own safety warning to compensate for the ones I have removed?
But this leap of faith to embrace the road and the use of a digital intervention has unlocked an alternative narrative for the film. It’s this combination of following your arrow and trusting instinct in the moment that makes filmmaking so exciting.
The Thames and the A40
The slow moving waters of late summer have now been replaced by a very different flow state on the Isis. Storm Babet and then Ciarán deposited a lot of rain onto an already saturated landscape and as a result it feels like the river is now in perpetual flood. I was hoping for more time on the water. But it’s important to be gently reminded of where one stands amongst the greater forces of nature, so obeying the Environment Agencies red flags I have been keeping my feet dry.
Recently much of what I have shot has used a pseudo widescreen camera aspect ratio of 2.39:1 as a means - a device, of immersing the viewer into a location. But I haven’t been using anamorphic lenses to achieve this effect. Rather I have composed my shots within a 2.39:1 mask while still exposing the whole sensor. This method has one advantage in that it allows me to reposition my horizontal framing during the edit. True widescreen or CinemaScope would be achieved using dedicated anamorphic lenses. An anamorphic lens optically squeezes the image onto the squarer digital sensor. At a later stage this image is then unsqueezed (either digitally or optically) to the original aspect ratio it was shot in. An important question for me to answer is whether a widescreen aspect ratio of 2.39:1 is appropriate for my project Remote Water?
Confronted in the fifties with the threat of television, the Hollywood film studios began to exaggerate the elements they then saw as essential to the cinematic experience. The desire was to make the moviegoing experience more spectacular and monumental in an attempt to differentiate it from television but also the wish to capitalise on the innate ability of film to transport the viewer. The potent image in classic cinema of the actor tightly framed within the Academy aspect ratio of 1.37:1 gave way to the Cinemascope aspect ratio of 2.39:1 which left great plains of space and the actor reduced to an element within the composition. This is now almost the default for cinema film distribution. Broadcast predominantly exists within a 16:9 aspect ratio. This is why, more often than not, you see movies when shown on television to be letterboxed - they have black bands above and below the image.
But where are we today now we have arrived at the infinity pool? Technology allows us to film in 360 degrees and then choose the desired framing after the event. Cinema distribution standards still exist, but is the choice of aspect ratio more than complying to a standard? How much of it is an aesthetic decision? Is the importance of the edge having a renaissance or are we doing what Edgar Degas is supposed to have done and created unique frames based on the subject at hand?
I shot my graduation film in CinemaScope but on Super 8mm film. It was a quiet demonstration by bringing together technologies associated with Hollywood film production and the almost obsolete technology of home movies. I bought a beautiful Leicina Special Super 8 movie camera and attached a projector lens, the very same lens used to un-squeeze 35mm films in the cinema, to the front of the camera. It was unwieldy, but worked! and in some cases 70mm film projection and allows for multiple distribution options. The new Dune feature film (directed by Denis Villeneuve) adopted a unique blend - a digital to film to digital process. Whereas Dune II (still to be released) has been shot on film in IMAX 70mm for the ultimate immersive experience.
“The sharpness and the clarity and the depth of the image is unparalleled. The headline, for me, is by shooting on IMAX 70mm film, you’re really letting the screen disappear. You’re getting a feeling of 3D without the glasses. You’ve got a huge screen and you’re filling the peripheral vision of the audience. You’re immersing them in the world of the film.”
Christopher Nolan, Director.
We are in an exciting time of hybrid digital and analog approach to filmmaking.
Remote Water certainly doesn’t have the same budget of Dune, estimated to be $165 million. But I share at least one concern - where does the threshold of illusion lie and what devices can I deploy to reach it. I suspect Remote Water will keep its black bands above and below the waterline. I hope as a viewer you experience that proximity to the water, and if you were to reach down you could possibly touch it?
Approaching the Isis from the Cherwell
While instructing military personnel in mountain craft I became aware of the 7Ps. The 7Ps is a British Army adage for Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance!
When I received the exciting news that I had been offered the position of Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College for my project Remote Water the proposed became the reality and some practical planning could start.
This planning has initially centred on how to film the Isis. My ambition is for the film to adopt the point of view of the river. This will require the camera to be close to the water and sometimes under it. Operating cameras near water requires some special considerations but operating a camera on or in the water raises the risks significantly!
There is a multitude of technological solutions available to film almost any scenario, but rarely have I adopted a solution straight from the box without some adaptation. This is what I call the Cat’s Cradle Conundrum. For example: if the solution is too large or complicated anything that I would hope to film on the river would have fled before I was even in a position to film it. If the solution is too small, anything I had hoped to film would be resolved in an optical space that would not cross the illusion threshold I was looking for. This is only one dichotomy of many. And more often than not budget underlies all decisions. In my experience this is synonymous with all film production - the ambition versus the compromise. The solution you reach will determine how you go about filming and ultimately affect the film you make. The edit has already begun!
My decision has been to use a kayak as a filming platform to achieve the point of view of the river. Within the spirit of the project a kayak feels an appropriate scale to engage with the river both technically and importantly socially.
So, after research, a process of prioritising and the ordering of technological solutions in line with creative ambitions and budget, I have chosen to use a stable sit on top fishing kayak as my river-based filming platform and plan to use a Canon C300 MKII as my principal camera within a dedicated soft waterproof camera housing. I’m presently finalising a solution to allow me to rig the camera at varying positions from the kayak and control the camera remotely. This will include the camera being submerged, the camera skimming across the water surface, to a raised position above the kayak. Initially I used some familiar go to favourites to build a prototype rig: a length of 2”x 2” timber, a magic arm and zip ties. This allowed me to understand the requirements. Often it’s not the architecture of the solution that raises the problems, it’s the solutions ergonomics - the ease of use in the field. Experience has taught me to address the solutions for the simplest tasks which are often overlooked in the pursuit of the bigger picture. On a cold dark wet February morning with numb fingers how easily can I replace a camera’s battery or how easy is it to change the camera’s position?
This prototype has since been replaced by adapting some existing technologies to provide me now with a day-to-day user friendly solution. Trials continue as I learn what can be achieved with this set up. Can simply manoeuvring the kayak using a paddle, the rudder and the river’s stream achieve the shot required? Conceptually there is certainly something to be said for the river’s natural drift controlling what we see and what we don’t.
Only time on the river paddling will tell.