This week, we presented our progress with our video portraits of our artists. As I had not yet filmed with Robbie, my presentation was not as in depth as others, but I decided to include my plan for when I was going to film (that Friday).
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CsxZBAUIweG4n0bNIjPYIviNKQwrxIgw7RKd6OOaVC8
A quick summary of my presentation:
I began by introducing Robbie Rowlands, his practice, where he studied and who he was represented by. I then moved on to some of the recent exhibitions he was part of, for example White Night 2015 and Fringe Furniture Festival 2016.
I had a collage of photos of Robbie’s work from over the years, showing his unique sculptural style – and to also give the class a bit of a visual idea of what I was talking about. I then moved onto my filming schedule, where I specified the date, location and the sort of equipment I was bringing to the shoot.
I also talked about potential subjects for the interview. Obviously Robbie was going to be a massive part, but I deliberated with adding in another person or two, such as Rachel Wilson and Robbie’s Gallerist.
I then moved onto my production style. Due to Robbie’s spontaneous nature, and lack of knowledge of what the location looked like. I decided to form a rough plan of my shoot, but to keep it flexible and open to changing. I decided to allow for the location to shape my filming style, trying to embody similar techniques of Robbie’s practice to the video portrait in order to obtain a more accurate representation of him.
The second half of the week was dedicated to driving up to Ballarat and filming the interview. Dusty and I picked Robbie up and we drove to Ballarat, the drive was great because it allowed for Robbie to speak to me on an impersonal level. I found out a fair bit of information about him, such as his colonial heritage, his young adult life etc.
When we arrived we scoped out the place, we found a spot to shoot the interview where the light would slip through the blinds and make interesting shadows on Robbie’s face – I wanted to try and captivate the mystery that seems to align itself with Robbie and his practice.
After we set up our lights we got to filming. Dusty was operating the Canon 5DMKII and the 6D, whilst I conducted the interview and monitored the audio levels.
Robbie’s interview was deeply interesting, he has a poetic nature about the way he speaks that allows for the derelict nature of his subjects to be endowed with a staggering beauty. Hearing about his travels through Central Australia and then to America in order to pursue sculpture as a practice was extremely engaging. He was humble and well spoken, and the footage looked and sounded great (in my opinion).
We then got lunch and drove back to Melbourne.