Instant Video #3 – Stars! by Tammy Lin Foreman (4 min. 2008) Directed, shot, and edited by Lester Alfonso for the collaborative weekly video project that ran from 2008 to 2010.
Check out also: The Instant Video Showcase and Before Instant Videos featuring videos prior to the Instant Video project and broadcast on CBC’s ZeD TV. Audio tracks are available for purchase on Tammy Lin Foreman’s Bandcamp page.
Say Say Say What You Want to Say…
Friday, October 17, 2008
The camera keeps glitching. The time-code keeps going back to 00:00 and when I rewind the tape, there is nothing recorded on it. Spooky. I had it coming. Now what are we going to do with Instant Video #3?
Flashback to last night when I got too bleary to shoot the video.
Tammy was ready. She wore a red shirt. She’d been rehearsing a nameless song by herself for a week and suddenly she was at the office door ready to perform.
I tried to get into it. I composed several shots but nothing was working. I just wasn’t feeling it. I did not want to repeat myself again with some kind of overhead shot, etc. But we are constrained to be recording inside this one room. This messy magic jam room of wires and books and instruments.
Tammy whisked a table cloth to drape over the bookshelf. It always has to be a mad scramble. Push pins. Groan. We’re trying to make fire here! Gotta get moving. Uh huh.
I had my video tape. I’m taping over an old interview.
I was bleary from staring at the computer all day. I had had some red wine. Ultimately, I said No. I can’t do it. It’ll have to wait until the morning. Shoot in the daylight. I’m too tired.
My head hits the pillow. “But it’s a nighttime kinda song,” Tammy protested softly.
I was already asleep. I don’t remember dreaming.
The next day, the camera is where I left it. And it stopped going back to 00:00, it now just asks for CLEANING CASSETTE and I don’t have one.
This is a shock. Tammy is ready again this afternoon. She’s wearing the same red shirt. We have to do it now. So we can upload it for Friday morning. This is our last chance. The sun is literally going down fast.
I have an idea. Ditch the video camera and shoot the Instant Video with that digital still camera my Dad gave me. I know it shoots some video. You can’t get any more instant than that.
It turns out I can shoot 20 min. of mpg video. I get fresh batteries.
I don’t have time to read the manual. I just shoot. Get the clap board to sync up the audio… Last minute: what are are gonna call this song? Stars! Okay.
This is a song that came out of Tammy’s free fall improv sessions. Yet it somehow got recorded as our answering machine message.
Georgia keeps quiet watching us do this which she eats her sandwich from the kitchen.
We do four takes. I know there must be a way to turn off the auto-focus and auto-levels on the camera but I decide it is actually doing something interesting. The camera’s automatic sensors are reacting to Tammy’s performance all on their own. There is something pleasantly random about that.
We upload Take Three because of Georgia’s unexpected reaction which, of course, I had to include as a final punctuation. (!)
posted by Lester Alfonso at 5:58 PM 0 comments