Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait

During the course of this project I have been directed, several times, to the work by Douglas Gordon Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. The French art critic Philippe Parreno, with whom Gordon collaborated, described the intent behind the work as being to "make a feature film which follows the main protagonist of a story, without telling the story." According from the blog where I sourced this quote, it's about portraiture, and possibly narrative too, a claim I can support after watching snippets of it on Youtube (such as the clip below).


Seeing as my work can be read as a series of video portraits of extended length, it's quite possible that it may explore similar artistic territory as Gordon and Parreno's. However, it is impossible to evaluate the work without first considering that it was filmed by, in the words of blogger Dan Hill, " the best camera operators in US and Europe", using a mass of absurdly expensive, military-grade video equipment, and the subject is one of the world's most famous sports celebrities. I, on the other hand, used the facilities available to me and my subjects were people I know who expressed interest in the project. There are many differences you could list:

• As previously mentioned, this work is constructed on ideals - ideals of wealth. It may be a comment on then, but would it be any less of one if the filmmakers had spent half the money they had to make it? My work is very much opposed to ideals. As I wrote in my proposal it's a take on a contemporary realism of sorts.
• Part of this realism is based on honesty to the viewer, the visual documentation of perceived reality as opposed to manipulative cinematic techniques. This artwork has soft, acoustic elevator rock playing in the background. Why? To make it look and sound even more like an advertisement? It's certainly not an audio signify we're meant to consider consciously.

But the work is about repetitive actions - most of it seems to consist of Zidane running, and then slowing to a walk, then running again. And my work does document repetitive actions. But mine doesn't need a soft rock backing track to make it interesting to the viewer, they are allowed to consider the repetition how they will and find it interest in its representation, I won't force them beyond basic editing.

More on quick shots/long takes

There have been two distinct reactions to the editing in the beginning of Sean's video: it was engaging, versus it was amateur. The seminarian who looked at my work professed an appreciation of longer, lingering shots, and while I am also a fan of contemplative cinematography I decided to edit Sean's morning routine in quick succession and with a certain disjointedness between each shot to further illustrate his rather rigidly sequential nature. However, in order to accomodate a cross-examination of a more lingering, illustrative sequence of shots versus faster, more pronounced editing, I have edited Alex's video with many more long takes and drawn out scenes than I allowed for Sean (or at least the earlier part of his day). This also corresponds to the less linear and sequential, extended monologuing qualities that define Alex's work in relation to Sean's, and in a sense I have found it exposes a certain drama in the proceedings that is itself drawn out and prolonged seemingly indefinitely, similar to Nuri Bilge Ceylan's use of long takes in Uc Maymun.

Still from Uc Maymun. (Source: http://www.europeanfilmacademy.org/2008/10/10/uc-maymun-three-monkeys/ )

Alex soldering jewellery in preparation for a core assessment.

Future projects

Given the facilities, I think I'll continue to film people for art. But, as I've described before, I feel the creative challenge of extensive filming has been exhausted, and a new format could possibly involve filming individuals for exactly one hour of the day (and perhaps condensing each hour down to a set amount - ten minutes, five minutes?), and showing these hours sequentially. Although it's just an idea at this point.

Performance

Editing Alex's footage, I've found individual variation contributes vastly to the scope of this project. Perhaps due in part to her having taken acting classes, Alex, whether consciously or subconsciously, treated her role in the project as something of a performance - in stark contrast to Sean's preferred realist, documentary approach. While Sean forced himself, as he himself said, to behave as honestly to his own sense of normal behaviour as possible, Alex was, in the words of another viewer, very careful. She had never explicitly described the direction she wanted to take the project in, even on the day quite eager to leave everything to chance.

In a sense, this affects the variety of engagement between herself and the viewer, offering more of a challenge in her handling of chance and taking a more active role in negotiating the camera. She chooses, on several occasions, to deliberately show self-consciousness, even describing it. She also asked me questions as often as I asked her, bringing my own life beyond the camera and the project into the fold and introducing a quality of self-reflexivity to the work, as well as a further challenge presented to me during the editing stage.

Sean had conventions in mind, and to him rules governed, or at least regulated, the use of a camera in any setting in order to produce a desired output. Alex's experience as an actor, however, encouraged her to focus less on the rules of being filmed and more on her own subjectivity and its digital decription. I can only imagine that I would find another entirely unique angle, and therein another creative challenge, were I able to film another individual. But the technical creative challenge of physically filming somebody for an extended period of time has been mostly resolved - I understand the prerequisites, the commitment needed and how art can be formed from it. If I were to film people in the few it may well involve further segmentation and focus on the subject and their relationship with the camera and their environment, as well as with themselves and other people.

Quick takes

I've noticed that small takes can be used to instantiate meaning with a degree of precision not available to longer takes. At the end of the shot, the transition to the next, you're still aware of its beginning, allowing a clearly mental image of wholeness to emerge in your mind following its passing. It becomes something like a statement, and this method of applicaiton works especially well with non-verbal scenes.

Display

Two immediate options come to mind with regards to displaying this work - TV/monitors and projection. I need to test both out first, but I'm leaning towards having the two works on self contained monitors or television screens for both conceptual and more pragmatic concerns.

Conceptually, the work is in some ways an interrogation of the way in visual media is increasingly doctored to manipulate and put the viewer ease - to operate on a subconscious, less consensual plane. A television screen invites the viewer to focus and engage, to involve themselves in a way similar to how they would involve themselves in a book, in the manner of the more traditional, education-based programming of television networks before the focus-group culture took hold. A projection signifies immersion, is meant to encourage it, and this may well work as counter-intuitive to the some of the core ideas behind my work.

Technically, the video quality of the work, especially Sean's piece, is grainy even on a small screen and I worry a large-scale projection may magnify its flaws. But the fine details go some way in making the work, and these will be, at least partially, lost in the lack of definition one finds in a projected film. It may work effectively in a dark room, but I'm presenting my photographic Visual Research work in the same space so decent lighting is a must.

I'll need to test both options once I have a finished work, but I have preferences in mind.

Feedback and editing

Of the many points of view given in feedback after I presented, a few stand out as being particularly stressed:

• The relationship between the viewer and the subject was mentioned more than a few times, specifically the identification with certain aspects of Sean's morning routine and the comparisons that can be made between him and the viewer, as well as him and Alex. Certainly I appreciate any engagement made, although I don't try to forcefully engineer such an engagement in either the shooting or the post-production. But if people find an academic interest in his life and how he applies himself to various situations then I will try to present the video in such a way that it can be, as easily as possible, interpreted and regarded openly with reference to the life of the viewer and that of other subjects.

Sean's conservative breakfast spread of only two Weetabix was remarked upon as being particularly meagre by some, perhaps effecting a judgement upon his identity as relative to his subscription to the national corporate character.

• Susanna Castleden raised the possibility of my reflection on the work and the decision making process I undergo being incorporated into the work itself, perhaps through voice-over, a term I let slip in disparagement. I feel, instinctively, that it would interfere with my stated aim to provide information for the viewer to interpret, with the arrangement of the isolated samples of the video my main editing creative contribute. But Global Village, one of my inspirations for the project, has Silvio Rivier's voice of reason politely informing the events unfolding on screen without interfering with them, so perhaps part of my prejudice needs to be challenged.
• Susanna also mentioned Tracey Moffat's series of women fighting back in film, which sounds like a very interesting exercise in editing, especially the dramatic qualities of separate clips from hundreds of films across a common theme and sequencing them.
• The number of people I'm going to film could be kept at two or expanded to four. If I keep it at two, I received the general impression, which I'm very content with, that the footage I have so far stands on its own and it's possible to engage by editing and displaying it alone. But filming more people could further the number of potential comparisons and relationships, expanding the size of the proverbial canvas for both myself and the viewer. Which I suppose makes it a question of workload.
  

Editing Alex

The storage constraints of the footage (several hundred gigabytes at the moment - it took nearly half as many hours as it did to film to transfer the footage from the camera to computer storage) have been overcome momentarily by keeping it on cold storage and the student art server, but this isn't safe as a long-term solution, and eventually I'll need to compress the raw footage, if only a little, and burn it on to several DVDs. At least ten will be needed per subject, probably more (if I can get the double-sided 9 gig variety). Currently I am working out sorting Sean's and Alex's footage into themed clips which can be activated by a future tagging system, but there are some common sequences between them:

• Both wipe their faces thoroughly with a towel at some point.

• Both spend some time in front of a mirror as part of their morning preparation.

• They both make breakfast and wash their crockery, although in different orders.
  

  
  

The tagging system and Jo Richardson

After consultation with artist Jo Richardson during a seminar, I have begun work on a tagging system in presenting my video for my final review. This will involve isolating several clips from all the footage I have based on certain very tangible concepts - 'eating', 'washing', 'coffee', 'self-reflex' (recognition of the camera), 'abject', etc. I will then organise an installation where these keywords can be selected by the reviewers, and all the associated videos will be played immediately across a series of screens. This will, for the moment, work in conjunction with a playing sample of the finished documentary (if it is finished). Also, I would like to setup one computer so that the reviewers can peruse a time-signified collection of all the footage I have taken, functioning both as documentation and an artwork in and of itself. The challenges facing me are:

• Learning the software which will allow this (I'll ask Kev about software I've used for similar projects involving much more interactive video before and if it's appropriate).
• Defining a series of appropriate tags and isolating individual video clips appropriate to them.
• Determining how much computer monitors the installation will necessitate, how the computer or computers will communicate the videos to them and how this will figure in the total number of clips (perhaps a monitor per subject).

Jo also suggested that the footage I've taken of Sean should be enough, if need be, to flesh out a finished body of work for the review, which is somewhat reassuring. The possibility of accompanying stills was also raised, and I have a few in mind which are deserving of printing.

On postproducing Sean

While in the early stages of postproduction, I found one of the most 'natural' feeling methods of editing the video involved focusing on processes with a definable beginning and end, and breaking them up with smaller clips of an implied process or lack of process. So the basic editing process for the earlier part of his day can be reduced to something of an explicit/implicit/explicit/implicit series of images, or perhaps even process/contemplation/process. However, this isn't a hard and fast rule and many clips cut to different stages of one single, explicit process, in order to give it a beginning and end, and often the process is also invoked implicitly. An example of this would be Sean's rather drawn out process of making breakfast - the entire process is begun by his walking into the kitchen and concluded by his leaving it, but it is comprised of several internal processes which often conflict with one another, such the realisation of separation components of the meal. But I consciously edit with the general rule kept in mind, and improvise where required.

Editing Sean and possible Alexandra

At the moment I am trying to edit the video I took of Sean together sequentially, something proving harder than I had anticipated. However, there is one line of continuity I can look for inbetween videos: on the day, Sean was suffering a recently swollen elbow, and was having trouble reconciling this with the relative hardness of his computer desk and the plastic arms of his chair. Because of this, during the course of the day he cycled through three different computer chairs, at first switching to a nearby chair with padded, elbow-friendly arms, and finally, finding even this too much to bear on his joints, he threw caution to the wind and comandeered an armless chair from the main administrative office. I am therefore using these separate chairs as technical signifiers for a sequential narrative of continuity - one of several narrative structures in Sean's day I have discovered retroactively. Below are screenshots of his first and second chairs, as well as his hasty acquistion of the final chair.

























On an unrelated note, I have secured another volunteer for the project - a jewellery student named Alexandra. Now, I need only negotiate a date for filming and make the necessary preparations.

Sean P. and technical considerations

After a bit of wrangling, I managed to film the projects first subject, Sean from about 7:30 Thursday morning until 6:00 in the evening. The line of events leading up to this I will document in greater detail later, but in summation:

• I first posted the idea for the project and a brief writeup on Facebook, a week before the semester started.
• Sean responded to this post, expressing interest in being a possible subject.
• I proposed acting upon this idea in my first Studio Project tutorial.
• Sean consulted his manager, who gave the go ahead so long as I am insured against public liability.
• I consulted the School of Design and Art administration, as well as the unit co-ordinator, and I was pointed toward the head of department.
• The head of department said I am automatically assured by the university if it qualifies as an authorised practicum, which is dependent on his authorisation and that of the unit co-ordinator. He would email Sean's manager informing him that I am covered, but I would need to get authorisation from the unit co-ordinator by submitting a pre-project proposal brief for consideration.
• I submitted the brief and was given authorisation from the unit co-ordinator, on the condition that I additionally submit an ethics form, which I will hand in to the head of department when I see him next.
• With the bureaucracy mostly dealt with, I loaned the necessary equipment from the department two days before filming.

The filming itself proved to be something of a pilot episode to my semester's season of work. Although I planned ahead for extensive filming by having two cameras available, with the aim to alternative between filming with one and recharging the battery of the other, this was only one of many concerns to take into consideration when intending to film constantly for long periods of time.

One of the biggest disappointments of the session was due primarily to a lack of technical foresight. Apparently, attachable microphones for cameras depend on AAA batteries in order to record sound and, as I found out earlier today while transferring the video files to computer storage, the battery inside the microphone I was using was flat. This effectively means that half the footage I took was silent, unless there are some hidden audio files recorded by the camera without the microphone a technician can point me to.

I'll write more about this later. The most I can draw from this experience at the moment is that it was an introduction to the skills and processes I'll need to draw from to engage in this project later on.