The Shoot

For the filming I borrowed a good Nikon Super8 camera (which I knew worked) from a friend with Ektachrome 64 film, I was limited in terms of film stock, there was only one real colour reversal option available for processing at the Widescreen centre in baker street; the Ektachrome does give nice vibrant colours so it wasn't bad, it just wasn't much of an experiment.

The film takes two weeks to process so I was on an extremely tight deadline with the filming. I had two days in Germany to shoot most of the footage I needed, as I was moving around, my ideas were processing and shifting and the first day was spent contemplating the task at hand. This, although productive meant the second day was a real push. The weather was bad and things just weren't as easy as they would have been on day one, there were some serious language and cultural difficulties that made trying to negotiate the use of a stranger for one of the characters in the film impossible in such a hurry. I did however shoot most of what I wanted for the content non character based.

The two strangers were shot back in London the next day, one in a park and one in the city. The man was french and ironically, language still got in the way of direction but I kind of liked this. He inscribed a message on the paper aeroplane for the stranger, who he would probably never meet, this read (a rough translation, it was in french): "This message is for you so you never forget me". I like this for several reasons, the fact they never meet gives the message a nice sense of irony, she didn't speak french so she never found out what the message said anyway and it resonates with the central character of the piece.

The girl I met in the street and agreed to play along, this was not the ideal scenario, given more time I would ideally have liked to have formed some kind of relationship, no matter how temporary between me and the subjects. I met the perfect person to fulfill this criteria who put me up for the night in Germany but there was absolutely no time which was disappointing. I always knew, right from the start of this project I wanted loads more time to film, over longer periods in two very different locations across europe but this was unrealistic so compromises were made.

I tryed to invoke a sense the third character through the filming, the 'characters' informally, talking and looking at the camera etc, showing moments like footsteps and personal voyeurisms and a home movie aesthetic.