From the footage we collected during the houseboat episode (for our individual films), we cut a collective piece. The clip above is my contribution and I approached it from the resources Timo and Francesco brought up at the beginning, and taking into account the pacing and intriguing sensation I got from David’s cut, as well as some additional footage.
Vimeo went crazy with the compression, but it does suit the opening sequence.
The planning
The most glorious part were the three discussions we had before even starting.
A big struggle of ours was authorship. In the beginning, some wouldn’t share their footage because they found it precious and sacred, since they originally collected it for their individual films, for other purposes. Others wouldn’t share theirs because they only picked the best clips for their individual films, so they felt insecure about the unpicked ones. And some were willing to share everything they had collected in order to see what new sense would other people make out of their sounds and videos. We established that everyone would share whatever they wanted and we ended up collecting almost all of the footage.
Another big topic was methodology. Some wanted to have a completely open and collaborative process with no structure or restrictions at all. Other wanted to have a structured process with a set of rules and a limited amount of time to work and to deliver results, either responding to what other people did or as a cadavre exquis. We ended up negotiating a work schedule that was supposed to serve as a guarantee that (1) the film would be ready before a certain deadline, (2) everyone would deliver a three-minute piece, and (3) people would be able to revisit the project to add-up new answers or ideas. In practice, frustrations and laziness affected some results (some unnecessarily long clips were put in place to fill the three-minute gap). At the same time, excitement and playfulness went after the construction of meaning and the fascination of replying to our new peers through filmmaking.
The result
I wonder if it is fair to call it a ‘piece’, and that is a topic, but not the topic here.
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