I decided one day, it was time to try to capture the essence of a place I love — the Waveney Valley. The heart of the valley is the river; for nearly sixty miles the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Geologically speaking, the valley made the river rather than vice versa. I’ve often told people that I live in Norfolk and walk the dog in Suffolk.
During the school summer holidays I set out with Ben the border collie. I had no intentions beyond collecting video footage of the river. Not the scenery; the river itself.
So over the course of a few days, I walked, filmed and while I did so, wondered how best to shape the experience. The images were paramount of course - I wanted people to see what I saw. Movement mattered, this was video. But I also wanted people to feel how I felt. Narration was irrelevant, yet, somehow, the finished video needed to make a kind of sense. I decided just to collect, discard poor footage and then group like with like, intuitively.
I had two pieces of music in my head to open and close the film. Eliza Carthy’s extraordinary, hallucinogenic ‘Lavenders’ the piece that had inspired me to collect the video in the first place. The other, perhaps more conventional but utterly lovely, Aria from J.S. Bach’s The Goldberg Variations.
Luckily it rained on day four and I was forced to sit down and begin the edit. Before I completed the rough edit I added music for the opening. Two things coincided as I did so: a sense of disappointment as the music faded out, and the desire to make clips fit with the music. After swapping the two pieces of music around, with great reluctance I rejected ‘Lavenders’ and settled on the Aria. Somehow it spoke of the experience of staring into running water yet did not impose on the imagery. I still wonder if I was right. And yet the footage appeared to fall loosely into four groups and the music into four sections. I relied utterly on intuition to decide how each clip could fit the music.
That I took the idea further was coincidental. The two videos that follow were filmed on my phone, without any prior intent.
One evening we escaped to Walberswick beach. You’ll find an account here. I lay in bed when we came home, clicking through my phone’s music collection. I had ideas of the mood I wanted to convey and I had some ideas where to look.
‘Beverly’ by John Martyn said, simply, ‘ choose me’.
The open spacious feel, the musical interplay of guitar and Danny Thompson’s bass, the hissing cymbals, the suppressed passion. For me, the high point of the film is the section around 2.30, when the meandering guitar follows the surf through the sinuous, sandy ripples. I wish it were possible to always find such perfect analogues - though I suspect it’s not. But I’m not sure it is sufficient just to use music to closely match one’s feelings. The video and the music must intertwine.
This second cameraphone film was made at Redgrave and Lopham Fen, the source of the River Waveney and the Little Ouse. The Fen is not conventionally beautiful. It is a little like the sea, subject to light and wind. Its treasures are small. It needed stark, empty, minimalist music. Brian Eno was a likely source.
Editing to this piece was simple, as the music makes it fairly clear where the cuts should come. I blogged about it here and also discuss the morality of using copyright music. With hindsight, I wish now I hadn’t used the closeup footage of Konic ponies.
I’m not a wildlife videographer. I haven’t the patience, the gear or the passion needed. I’m not even a videographer. I’m simply someone trying to create things that please me, and, with luck, interest others.
Creativity, as Steve Jobs famously observed, is ‘just connecting things’ . After a gap of some years, I find these far-from perfect pieces still connect with me. I’m itching to get out with my new camera… when the wind and rain will let me.
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