Down with Hollywood!

Long live British Social Realism!

The Genius of Photography (and ways it puts holes in your pockets)

Ok, so I'm sat in the library on campus contemplating whether or not the wide-angle lens I've just bought from eBay was actually necessary. Well, no it wasn't and yes it was. No because I can't really afford it and don't really need it, and yes because it wasn't that expensive and I do really need it. I blame television.

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Last night I watched one of the programs in a series called The Genius of Photography. It's one of them historically-informative documentaries, this one charting the beginnings of said technology and it's subsequent developments over the last 150 years or so. This particular chapter talked about the period between the 1950's and 1970's, including street photography and the use of colour photographs as 'art' as opposed to commercial uses.

Seeing the photographs of Stephen Shore and Toby Ray Jones for example, inspired me to get up out of my seat right there and then and go out and snap people. Well, it was like night and stuff so I didn't. But seeing that programme last night and seeing these photos made me want to run out in the street and shoot....

Actually, I haven't at all thought this blog entry through and I don't really know what I'm trying to say. Basically I'm planning on taking my camera everywhere from now on and I needed a wide-angle lens to evolve my photos more to include 'the bigger picture', and not a condensed image that a 50mm lens offers. 28mm is the 50mm in my camp. Street photography would be so much simpler.

This Short Film is called It's About Bloody Time!

I've been too slack with this blog lately. It's not so much that I don't have the Internet (although that's a factor), it's more to do with the fact I have nothing to write about. Pretty much nothing has gone on in my life since the last post, apart from starting back at Uni and Suzy moving in with me. I did go to Amsterdam a few weeks back though, for the day.

Every so often I get the urge and motivation to do a project of some sort. Whether it be a bit of photography or an idea for a script. This time it's a short film. It's something I've been playing with for about four years, and it was probably four years ago I last thought of making one.

The inspiration behind this urge of creativity is Lars Von Trier. Recently I have rewatched Dancer in the Dark, as well as watching Epidemic, and Images of a Relief, and it's inspired me to want to pick up my DV camera and shoot something.

My idea is to mix documentary-style reality with filmic, story-driven characters - in the way that Von Trier did in Epidemic, which tells the story of two screenwriters writing a movie about a plague (shot in a Dogme, documentary-style), intercut with scenes from the movie they are writing, which is shot in dreamy, filmic style by Henning Bendtsen with overdubbed sound. I would be shooting with a DV camera but using a proper microphone to capture sound and dubbed it over in editing, so it gives it an unusal quality. I would probably use red lighting too.

Whether I will or not remains to be seen. I lose motivation quite quickly when I think to myself I won't be able to make the film I have in my head quite the way it should be made. I'm either a perfectionist, or just plain lazy. Hopefully it's the first reason.