Camera: iPhone 4, Nikon Coolpix S8100, Canon Vixia HFS200
Editing: Final Cut Pro
Music: Andy M. Stewart, Where Are You (Tonight I Wonder), sung by Jennifer Sharpe
This episode was maybe a little more challenging than the first, because I had several ideas throughout the month but none of them really became complete – as soon as I started one, thinking that was it, I lost its trail and then I was off to something else like a confused hunting dog. In the end I ended up mixing new footage from a beach trip last Thanksgiving that I hadn’t used yet with an older work, My Own Tattoo (Boat Ride). Before I started this project I began to realize after I initiated Still In Utero that I tend to be drawn to certain themes, and that much of my video and photography work can be joined together pretty harmoniously as a result. Adding a short film I had done long ago to this new episode gave that film a deeper purpose. Initially it was a fragment, now it served as a piece of the larger puzzle of Abbandonata.
I also decided I was going to sing because I had been wanting to for some time, but just hadn’t gotten around to it. The Andy M. Stewart song was one I had listened to many times via a June Tabor recording. I wasn’t going to even get close to singing like her, plus my voice is comfortable in a higher range than her beautiful contralto, and I knew that I wasn’t going to have the energy to do accompaniment at all. So I sang it simply, the only way I know how, skipping the ornamental flourishes and adding the hollow feeling of being in a very large space (called “Cathedral” in FCP X’s audio effects), and worked it in to fit the somewhat refined, somewhat rough style I feel is the most honest way for me to express myself. Since I never, ever sing publicly, never mind record my voice in song for total strangers, it was another “what the hell I ain’t got that many years left to live anymore” moments. And since my son, listening to it, really liked it, I posted this episode, song and all, more confidently.
Finally, I added a piece of the story I wrote for this project underneath the film. I wrote a very short story that is the basis of this project, and its jumping off point. That all came out of practicing 100 word stories a few times over the summer. I really enjoy writing but always want it to be a part of a larger project with visuals and sound. That’s what is defined as film, I realize.
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