Cinema & Movies: Making Movies

[Under development: 31 May 2005]

During the late 1980s, I used a camcorder for only the second time in my life. I was using it in a college training room to record counselling practice interviews, groupwork presentations and for training in Interpersonal Process Recall. My first time, in 1979, was fleeting ("Rather like the first time one has sex, but not so messy, and far less call for condoms." Four Weddings and a Funeral, reception of first wedding), while training to be a school teacher. On this second occasion, however, I had no intention of letting go. In the end, I simply bought the camcorder with which I was teaching: a big old Panasonic M4. Although now a little frayed round the edges, the camcorder is still in use today.

I have since made many home movies using my camcorder. It goes without saying that I record domestic gatherings (to celebrate births, marriages and deaths, in particular) of family and friends, and as time accelerates, and the people I know age and die, my sepia-tint video tapes (like the fantasy passages in Dad) increasingly take on the poignant quality of the home movie sequences in Testament. I tend to think of my Panasonic M4 in the way that Super 8 movie camera owners probably did (see some of the teenage scenes from Cinema Paradiso, and the opening credits of Amelie).

Over time, however, I have taken my big, old, heavy camcorder with me on holiday to quite a lot of western Europe. Despite coming close to having it stolen violently from me in Paris, Aix-en-Provence and Rome, the effort of lugging it all the way has always been worthwhile. For example I have video-recorded my impressions of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and stills from the video recording I made of the gardens at Giverny can be seen in the Musées d'Orsay and Marmottan in Paris, and the National Gallery in London (painted by Monet, of course). I love working out how to bring buildings and streets to life on film. I have also experimented with all manner of hand-held techniques, such as: filming from a moving car / from the front of a speeding steam locomotive / from a glass lift/elevator; swinging the camera in a cartwheel (this required a lot of confidence in the strap).

For many people, making movies involves using actors. However, I find real life is more than enough to think about.

I wish that I had the confidence to edit the film sequences, and to mix the soundtrack with voiceover and music. Maybe one day.

p.g.h@btinternet.com

Culture: sitemap

Peter Hughes: Introduction