An experimental video motivated by being drawn to a seaside resort in off-season. What storyline? Initially it was shoot and see what happens. A creative exercise. As time drew on, I realised the weather (variable to say the least) was the narrative – the rain driving me away from the town but leaving with memories of better days – which pretty much summed-up the filming of this piece. The draw was the idea of seaside resorts with fading splendour deserted in the winter but, as I discovered, there wasn’t much in the way of faded splendour – more an active out-of-season resort with always something going on and, more often than not, a sandy paradise for dogs and their owners.
TECHNICAL
One of the greatest issues to counter and overcome was, unsurprisingly perhaps, the awful weather or more accurately, the constant battering wind. A 1.4X converter was used on the 200mm f2.8 lens for most shots to give cinematic throw to the image and reduced depth of field. However, even the slightest wind-induced camera shake rendered the footage unusable (except for one or two clips After Effects managed to stabilise sufficiently). And there was a lot of wind. Did I mention the wind? The film was edited in Premiere Pro and graded in PP and Magic Bullet Looks. Magic Lantern was used during the recording achieving an average bit rate of 50mbps which definitely helped during the grading.
