The interviewing/filming /editing process
Interviewing James , the Commanding officer of The Royal West Surrey Regiment
Interviewing Steve, the co-ordinator of the Victorian Strollers
Interviewing Rob, the drummer of The Royal West Surrey Regiment
Interviewing Gary Commanding Officer Of The Royal West Sussex Regiment and Friends Of Shoreham Fort co-ordinator
3 film shoots at Shoreham Fort to collect video footage of the fort
Interviewing Derek Commanding officer of the Fort Cumberland Guard
Commencing the selection of the material - choosing material that relates to uniforms, posture, drill, the army and homosexuality
Issues arising
Discovering certain issues concerning an unwanted noise on the a small section of the material. This is removed using the Audacity software programmme
Starting the edit , revisiting other material for possible use
Continuous editing and when I have an audio piece starting to develop I then started to look at the video footage.
I discovered that there was not really enough material despite spending several hours at the fort, I clearly had not allowed the camera to run sufficiently long enough ...
Steve's Prince Of Wales outfit
"A splendid looking outfit"
Shoreham Fort appealed as a subject to acompany the audio as it was connected to the regiments historically and to the re-enactors who perform there but would not provide illustration. The permanence of the Victorian buildings fitted conceptually with the permanence and persistance of the hegemonic masculine image and despite challenges and some changes, society's enduring notion of what a man 'should be' I chose close up or abstracted shots similar to the one left (unlike the stills below) that I hoped would indicate what the building is whilst maintaining an enigmatic quality in the image.The camera was mainly static on a tripod with a few moving camera shots taken
Stills of Shoreham Fort
Visual representation of the audio
Having progressed with the audio edit, there was still a conflict for me regarding how to represent visually what was being spoken about and I considered several options:
I didnt have enough material to cover the lenght of audio I had created , I reduced the speed of the footage to increse its length.
There were also other options I considered in terms of presenting the work:
Using a projection of the fort video footage alone, placing stills of the uniforms between video clips, projecting in black and white, doing a separate side projection of uniform stills to run simultaneously but not synched with the video, using archive footage (from the 1950's ) of the Surrey and Sussex Regiments.
Trying out a black and white projection in the space
After discussions, suggestions and much thought, I made the decision to use the fort footage and to shoot more footage to give myself more flexibility in the edit .This also provided me with more variety of texture and colour than previously as the colour in the footage was limited.
and I recorded some good material at Box Hill Victorian Fort and at an open space in East London where there was an abundance of wild flowers growing.
The audio material was reduced in length to around 8 mins andI felt it had a good rhythmic quality but I decided to add a soundtrack of manipulated drum and bugle music and sound effects of walking/running on gravel to use in certain areas where the camera was moving.
I tried out a side projection of stills of uniforms to accompany the main video. Reaction was mixed and so i decided to abandon this idea
Whilst resolving the edit I am considering how to install the work, and providing a bench seat seems appropriate in view of the lentgh of the film 8-9 minutes so far. Placing the projector high will avoid traffic intereference but may compromise the image quality? Two Speakers will be wall mounted, one on either side of the room. I may also need to make a blackout curtain as the room is near an open door way.
There has been a lot of useful and varied discussion in repsect of how I could present this work and what there should be in terms of content .I have settled on using video footage only, with no sound effects or music as I feel that that voices have their own rhythm and removing the soundtrack allows them to be heard more clearlywith no distraction.
Sharon McElroy