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brandonjohnbarnard · 7 months ago

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Production history around: Circles

This piece goes into the history of how my short film ‘Circles’ came to be.

Flashing light warning for this one!!

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The film which I consider the first in my artistic, chance-filmmaking journey is ‘Broodiest Flunkey’. While I have been creating films since I was very little to various degrees. This is the first one where I had an image in my mind of doing it seriously.

This film was originally created, both for my MA Experience Design course, and so it could be shown at Imperfect Cinema’s Cinaesthesia 2 event, which was run by Patrycja Loranc.

As part of this event, there was the ability in the morning to attend a workshop. In attendance was my wife Isobel, Tim Francis, Sam Johnson, Patrycja Loranc, Dan Paolantonio, Kate Stubbs, and myself. The purpose of this workshop was for all of us to collectively contribute to a film which would be shown at the end of the event. Most of us would film the footage, Patrycja would edit it, and music would be added live by Oddstep Deployment Unit.

(Isobel and I prior to Cinaesthesia 2 starting.)

In terms of what footage we had to collect, Patricia gave each of us a random prompt. Mine was ‘smelly’, and my wife’s prompt was ‘circles’.

Isobel and I went out together and within an hour we had to collect as many scenes as we could that featured these prompts in one way or another. Since we were working together, we both ended up noticing objects that applied to the other person’s prompts as well. So for example, I would sometimes point out circles and Isobel would point out stinky objects.

This was a really fun and rewarding exercise, and was great for my PhD down-the-line, as it was a good example of using prompts as a method of chance. I wish I could share this creation with you (which I call ‘Change Spaces’, I’m not sure if it has a real title), but it is under lock and key.

(A screenshot from ‘Change Spaces’.)

A day passed from this screening, and then another, and then another, but something was irking me: I would still take special notice of every circle I saw, kind of with the energy of “oh this could have gone in the film”. A month later, I was still seeing and noticing circles more than other elements in town.

Not only did I notice circles, I also thought about how they could be used. What transitions could I do? Do I overlap them on top of each other? What about circles from different angles?

(Some of my raw notes when thinking about film ideas. I decided against many of them.)

Like banishing a demon, I thought to myself ‘I need to use these thoughts and ideas in something or else they would keep a bothering me’. Remarkably it worked.

A similar thing happened with my film ‘Graffiti’ later down the line. Once the film was out, it felt like the part of my brain that was storing all these thoughts got wiped clean and I could finally move on to something else.

Again, in a similar fashion to ‘Graffiti’, I felt that there was something special about capturing Plymouth. The time and place being immortalised in a weird way. Though, I did not use as much of the footage as I thought I would, with only maybe a third of the captured circles being used in the piece.

This happened primarily due to two reasons, both relating to my newly realised obsession with chance.

Firstly, the music. I decided to have God take the wheel, and by that I mean my wife. I asked her to select the song that would be used in the film, with no input from me. I wanted to work with whatever she decided on as a type of audio prompt, and a challenge. Originally, I imagined a type of frame-by-frame animation for this film, with each circle being used to move a ball around the screen. Similar to the onion skin animations often depicting how a ball bounces.

(Not my pic, not sure where it comes from. Sorry animation teacher!!)

However, Isobel picked the song ‘short set vol.2’ by szymalix. This song is way more poppy, like bubbles bursting. Rather than fighting this tonal change, I decided to go with the flow and create something different. This was the first time I used music which I had no control over as a prompt. I really liked having this weird ghost co-director via the music dictating the pace and energy of the production. It led to many thoughts about how collaboration is a chance-based practice.

Secondly, I tried to not have too many manufactured circles if possible. By that I mean I could have put myself in a position where I pulled out every single circle thing I could find in my house and then have hundreds upon hundreds of circles. I also didn’t want to use a single schema of circles, for example every round bulb I saw, or round sign, or round window, etc. I wanted the circles I used to be those I randomly came across.

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Two tangential thoughts.

One.

It is interesting how the ‘circles’ prompt in ‘Change Spaces’ influenced Gacha’nce. Because we were looking for circles, it led us to a gachapon machine due to both coins and the prize balls being circles.

(A section from ‘Change Spaces’ where the gachapon machine is used.)

I have become very interested in influence and chronology, especially the unintentionality behind a lot of it, so this has been something I have been thinking a lot about. I will make another medium article about this at a later date.

(Influence web, which shows Patrycja’s workshop unintentionally causing ‘Circles’ and ‘Gacha’nce’ to be created.)

Two.

I think it is interesting how there are these noises in our original creations, that create a louder echo later on. It is like a pebble dropped in a pond that causes a circle of impact to spread outward in all directions.

In this instance, the lights from the nightclub ‘Images’ is used in ‘Circles’. When I ordinally created ‘Circles’ I had no idea how many times I would go to Images in the future, the people I would meet there, the memories, etc.

Later, the nightclub would reappear in ‘After Images’.

The idea that this ignorance of my future is captured in my work I find kind of fun. Whenever I make something new now, I try to think about what stepping stones exist hidden under the surface. The more I make, the more can be made.

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Thanks for reading ❤

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