Artist Statement
Through group discussion we established that we would like to create a work of slow cinema centred around a perspective other than that of a human. We chose the perspective of our pets. We all have a different type of pet:
Kayla - Lizard
Lucy - Cat
Christie - Dog
As we’re all creative writers, we chose to all take on the role of filming and editing our own videos of our pets. We felt that this was the fairest way to distribute the workload.
Our intention is to show how our pets spend their time. As humans, we’re driven by a need to achieve and make progress in our lives in whatever areas we deem important. For animals, life has a different pace and focus. Through observing how our pets spend their time on an average day, we had the idea that they generally like to sleep a lot and that they live in the present rather than being caught up in their thoughts the way humans are.
We set up cameras and filmed our pets in their natural home environments - be that a glass tank or the backyard. By letting go of the need to film from a human perspective and allowing events to unfold on their own, we created a new type of work that wasn't influenced by our own human perspectives - at least as much as is possible.
To further demonstrate that the films are from our animals’ perspective, we chose to edit our footage to show the colour schemes that our pets are able to see: showing how the work looks through their eyes. By doing this we hoped to world outside of our comfort zones - as three Creative Writing students, we wanted to do more than the editing basics, and attempt new realms of post-production possibilities.
If this work were to be displayed to the public, we would have three separate screens in a gallery space, playing on repeat, allowing visitors to choose which slow film they wanted to watch.
We ran into some challenges in our creative process. The main one was that we had trouble with how much our animals moved around and out of frame. It took several attempts to get the right clips and angles and some improvisation, such as using a rock as a tripod in Christie's case. We had to learn quickly to embrace the spontaneity of our pets.
The methods we had to undertake in order to pay proper homage to slow cinema also tested what we consider about narrative structure within film. Although we’ve done plenty of experimental works over the semester; the patience required to shoot a single frame for several minutes rather than testing multiple takes was easier said than done. The desire to stop recording and create something more contrived was overwhelming, particularly because our pets aren’t the most cooperative muses. However, all three of us managed to stick it out and are really proud of the end results.
Link to my video:
Screenshots of my team members' videos:
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| Kayla's lizard Tyson |
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