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Before The End (2:26) was the one that went viral. It was only meant to be an exercise in teaching editing and how audiences read emotions and narrative into the succession of images, as posited by Kuleshov, but updated for social media, where images are simultaneous and split-screen. Here, Hawke and Delpy are not looking at other but we read them as if they are, folding the two into facing each other as if they were in profile and reading their expressions as cause and consequence of each other. It's also, of course, a simulation of a fourth ‘Before’ film for the pandemic, which sees Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy on a video call in 2020, and is therefore about the lockdown too, how it affects audiences, filmmakers and characters in films that are separated, and unwittingly recreating the scene in the record booth from Before Sunrise, which is suggested by the re-use of the Kath Bloom song 'Come Here'. The video incorporates footage from the Q&As that Hawke and Delpy did with Cameron Bailey for TIFF Originals on 30 April and 12 May 2020 respectively, (See Hawke and Delpy). I submitted it to [in]Transition and then posted it to a Facebook group dedicated to the films, where a few dozen views could be expected, but it quickly went viral and was the subject of press reports around the world including a lovely feature on Indiewire that I still can't believe. A fascinating, even scary experience to watch this go viral, especially during the pandemic. Click screen or here. Update: Before The End was selected for publication in [in]Transition with reviews by Dave Johnson and Kim Wilkins and selected by Sight & Sound as one of the ten best video essays of the year in 2020.
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Playing around with Google Earth to see if the project facility, by which tours can be created, could lend itself to the scouting of film locations. Location Scouting Before Midnight Via Google Earth (5:06) is a seemingly straightforward exercise in matching the Google earth project with clips from the film, but it's very tricky to complete and there are dozens of bad 'takes' to learn from. Start by plotting the Google Earth project and then choose the music and practice going through the project in time with the music. Then film the desktop over and over until you get it right. Try not to kill your mouse. Then import the film and the music into an editing programme, line them up, and add clips too. A lot of fun but not an exercise for perfectionists! Click screen or here.
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As above but more ambitious, touring Vienna in the order of the places visited chronologically in Before Sunrise. A Google Earth tour set to music, the music 'Love Waltz' by Nikos Spiliotis adds so much to this and allows me to title the piece The Before Sunrise Waltz (6:50). Again, many hours of preparation and practice and bad takes went into this, with the making of the Google Earth project first, then the attempts at synching it to the music (which is looped and played twice) and finally a few credits. It's addictive trying to synch things in a single take as you're recording your desktop, but there also comes a time when 'good enough' must do. I love the basic circling and swinging movement possible in Google earth, which is essentially caused by switching between 2D and 3D. Click screen or here.
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One of my favourite video essays for obvious reasons, After Before Midnight (10:00) combines scenes from Before Midnight with footage I shot while on holiday in June 2019 in the area of the Western Peloponnese where it was filmed. Yes, that's me and my wife, Esther. Actually finding the locations was hard work, especially the chapel in Platsa. They are a long way apart and the trajectory between them lacks all logic. I like to think that when Céline left the hotel room she hailed a taxi and Jesse caught the one behind her, shouting 'Follow that cab!' for the two hour drive too the pier at Kardymili. This and a few other observations on the filming, such as wondering how the cicadas were silenced adds up to what I hope is a very affectionate video. Click screen or here.
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Between Sunrise and Sunless is a short film (11:50) that searches for Jesse and Céline in Vienna on Bloomsday, 16 June 2013. As their absence reveals the city, so this pilgrimage to places they have been becomes lost in time, and an homage to three films of flânerie: Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, Chris Marker’s Sans soleil and José Luis Guerin’s En la ciudad de Sylvia. This was filmed during my own exploration of the locations of Before Sunrise in Vienna, something I would repeat in Paris for Before Sunset in 2018 and the Peloponnese for Before Midnight in 2019. This is popular amongst the fan community and was recommended by Sight & Sound and CNN. Click the screen or here.
- 10xM (4:15) is my response to a challenge set by Professor Catherine Grant via Facebook to create a montage of one’s ten favourite films beginning with a specific letter. I got M. It’s a deceptively simple yet complex task and it teaches the maker a great deal about editing. I started with the introductory voiceover to Manhattan (this was before that film became unwatchable) and laid it over the opening to Mean Streets, which segued into Miami Vice (the most underrated film ever made). From here on it’s mostly flukes in the editing, such as the match cuts from the ’negative’ of Martyrs to the ‘positive’ of McCabe and Mrs Miller and from the bullet firing in Memento to the airplane engine in A Matter of Life and Death. Philip Seymour Hoffman had just died so I wanted to hear him speak and from Magnolia on it was onto any Godard beginning with M and Steve Martin’s sublime drunk test in The Man with Two Brains. A great exercise for learning how to edit. Click the screen or here.
No Trespassing: From Manderley to Xanadu (3:54) followed a screening of Rebecca in The Electric Cinema and my introducing Citizen Kane shortly before this in the same cinema. I was struck by how the opening and closing scenes of these two films have so much in common and so juxtaposed them, side-by side, with the result that Welles comes off quite badly, suggesting trespass: the slow approach, the building, the light, and then fire, the burning R. Will de Gravio wrote a fine essay Exploring the Relationship Between 'Citizen Kane' and ‘Rebecca' on this for Film School Rejects and followed it with his own video essay entitled Trespassing: From Manderley to Xanadu. This is also featured on FilmSchoolRejects; Classic Movie Favourites and The Movie Waffler. Click the screen or here.
Cityscapes, Flânerie and Fantastical Heritage (21:32) is a video essay that I made for the project on European heritage cinema with Paul Cooke. It was made to be expositional and didactic, to get across the basic theoretical ideas of flânerie in relation to films set in cities. The selection was huge and putting them all in some kind of order was a challenge. This final version is quite long, but fun can be had from naming the films that appear, from the most obvious like Before Sunrise and Alice in the Cities to more obscure clips like In the City of Sylvia, Quiet City and L'Age d'or. I like the use of Before Sunset and Wings of Desire as well as the ending with The Bourne Supremacy. It's a pretty basic collage but the onscreen text makes it useful. Click the screen or here.
Watch, Listen, Move: Empathetic Filmmaking Aesthetics (6:02) was made to support an application to the AHRC for a project called Representing Neurodiversity: Discovering Dyscalculia. This was a massive project that took two years to pull together and it ultimately didn't get funded, partly, I imagine, because the concept of empathetic filmmaking aesthetics is difficult to get across. Anyway, this was the expositional video essay lasting. brief six minutes with clips from Festen, Julien Donkey-Boy, Better Call Saul, Lady Dynamite and Notes on Blindness that make it worth a watch. I've just noticed that it's been added to 11 collections on Vimeo, so someone must get it. Click the screen or here.
Tag (12:10) is a video essay that I submitted to the [in]Transition online journal. The essays that go with it, both mine and that of its two reviewers can be accessed here. I described it for the journal as a game played by four films from the French New Wave (À bout de souffle) to New Hollywood (Bonnie and Clyde) to the modern American indies (Before Sunrise) and on to contemporary low-budget European cinema (Stockholm). My objective was to link, compare and contrast the recurring motif of the long take or minimally edited sequence that depicts the dérive or drift of a couple whose seemingly aimless stroll is juxtaposed with the subtle yet persistently seductive gambit of their dialogue. Instead of laying these shots or sequences side by side, a more complex game of tag emerged, a metaphor that lent itself to the notion of a zeitgeist passing from one film movement to the next in a transatlantic, pan-generational palimpsest of a couple walking and talking. Click the screen or here.
Festen: A video essay (07:53) is an early attempt a video essay that ties to get across the reasons why I find this film from the Dogme movement so fascinating. Click the screen or here.
- Akelarre: A video essay (11:40) came out of the same project as the documentary upon Basque heritage cinema, the European heritage cinema project with Paul Cooke and my book on Basque cinema co-written with Maria Pilar Rodriguez. It's a video essay on the film Akelarre (Witches' Sabbath, 1984) directed by Pedro Olea. One of a series of video essays produced for the AHRC-funded Screening European Heritage project run as a collaboration between the Leeds Centre for World Cinemas and B-Film: The Birmingham Centre for Film Studies. The music makes this essay speed by and might account for its popularity - an astounding 8,462 views on Vimeo! I have no idea who is watching this. Click screen or here.
Cria cuervos: A video essay (11.53) is a very early attempt at a video essay on the film by Carlos Saura. Featured on Mediático. Click the screen or here.
Vacas: A video essay (5:43) is my very first attempt. It tries to explain one of my favourite film moments of all time - the "who takes the photo?" scene in Julio Medem's film Vacas. Click the screen or here.