Camera placement

A comment from Gil on one of last month's contributions:

Gil: I wanted to remark on the style of Courtney's video. For me, one of the things that made it successful was the single camera placement and the eschewing of any editing.

If this video had been shot in the traditional fashion of long shots, medium shots, and closeups, I don't think it would have worked nearly as well. The video operates on the premise of an overheard conversation, and if the video had been cut into individual shots, the unity of time and space would have been broken. And because it functions to a large extent (for me at any rate) as an interior monologue externalized, if you were to cut to a close-up of Courtney, and we were thus made much more aware of her speaking the words, it would have required a different kind of willing suspension of disbelief. Performing primarily with her back to the camera also enhanced the illusion of overhearing something.

The camera was placed at a slightly higher angle, looking down on the scene. If it had been a ground-level shot, that could have implied that we were another character observing this (a roommate, a daughter) from another room. But placing the camera above eye level created the anonymous "fly on the wall" perspective.

Nonetheless, if you were to announce to someone they were going to look at an eight minute video shot from a single stationary camera angle, you ordinarily might expect to hear murmuring of some sort. But here, it was a case of the camera being in the right place at the right time.

Slight clarification

Better and better: Martha will, as hoped, read from her new novel, The Incident Report, but Theo will be singing a song in accompaniment. Exactly which song we will have to wait to hear.

Line forming

It's only mid-March but already the line is forming. Giovanna has promised to read the second half of the poem she began to read to us last month. Gil, despite epic obstructions created by not quite malevolent software, has finished editing a video account of his visit to China, which he will show us. Theo is at work on "a couple of songs." Christine intends, she tells me, to do a performance piece based on her instructions to runners. Martha, I hope, will read from her new novel. And I'm tinkering with a couple of pieces, one of them yet another monologue.

Want to get in line? Use the comments button.

First session

Our first session, at the end of January, included a talk and performance (on the mandolin) by Cary Fagan and a story by Mariella Bertelli about her experiences with the Roman bus system.

Second session

Our second session, on February 24, included a monologue by Bernard Kelly entitled "The patient before me," a reading by Diane Bracuk of Czeslaw Milosz's poem "And yet the books," a short video by Courtney Fairweather entitled "The date," and a reading by Giovanna Riccio of her own poem "#1 — Vittorio."

In their own words:

Diane: As per your request, here's the poem by Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish poet who won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1980. I read it as a tribute to Val Ross, whose innate grace — both as a person and writer — I respected and admired. This is just another variation of "their words will live on" theme I suppose, but I like his suggestion in the last lines, that some works are derived from people, but also from divine inspiration.


AND YET THE BOOKS

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
"We are," they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant,
Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Berkeley; 1986

* * *

Courtney: I was glad of the opportunity to show my 10 minute video of "The Date", an improvised monologue delivered in front of a full length mirror while trying on various outfits for a blind date. Body image and the pressure women feel to please men were my central themes.

I appreciated the laughter and praise of those who viewed it. Watching it again, I could see points where a little editing would have been valuable.

* * *

Giovanna: #1 — Vittorio: A dramatic monologue with the listener identified — so an elderly widowed Italian man is being visited by his wife's sister. The ensuing dialogue is a reflection not on loss of the old country which will make it nostalgia, but on fragments of a life story that illuminate the character and unfortunate circumstances that result in a loss for everyone of a gifted voice.The circumstance are particular but hopefully transcend into the universal and describe a silencing that happens everyday in our world because of poverty and a forced immigration that results from it.