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I am a storyteller, I hadn’t really thought about it much until this weekend at the Junction 2010 Arts Conference. I had just been blogging away merrily here at Frog Ponds Rock telling stories about my life, working away creating ceramics, all of which have their own stories and now I am discovering film making which is the easiest way of all to tell a story.
I also like to help other people tell their stories. So if you are here reading this because I offered to help you in some way please be assured that my offer was genuine. Send me an email or leave me a comment and we can work out a plan.
I am always astounded that people are interested in what I do. I keep on waiting for someone to tell me that I am stupid and useless (thanks Dad) and that what I am doing is a ridiculous waste of time but people never do. They smile when I talk and they ask me questions about my work and let me waffle on about dead albatrosses, ethical food production and dragons eggs.
I have passion in abundance. I am passionate about my work, my family, life in general and thanks to Ernesto Sirolli my newest guru I know that I am on the right track.
It was amazing to listen to a passionate speaker like Ernesto Sirolli confirm what I truly believed, that if you are doing what you love, the money will follow.
I have always told my children to do what they love and to worry about the money later and a small part of me has often wondered if I had been doing them a disservice. I look at my daughter doing what she loves passionately and I know that although her path is difficult she is happy. Once my son starts to follow his passion I know that he will be happy as well, it is just a bit hard for him at the moment because he is such a gifted child that all his teachers want him to excel in their chosen field and that is a lot of pressure for a sixteen year old to carry.
I have so many stories to tell and so little time in which to do it. So stay tuned my dear bloglings I have come back from Junction 2010 with so much energy and renewed passion that it could be dangerous.
Here are some photos from my weekend away, just mouse over the photos to get the titles.
Here are some images from Friday at Junction 2010. These images are straight out of the camera. I am suffering from information overload and it is fantastic.
Not much later though, I am looking forward to putting this together, I am just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit and then we will have fishy mayhem. There will be death and destruction galore and I will film it all.
For new readers of this blog I am not really about to indulge in a bit of fish assisted homicide, for even though he is very grumpy I am rather fond of The Spouse.
I am talking about the film I said I was going to make during my creative concept development class.
I have discovered that there is a little bit more to making a film than grabbing a video camera, shooting some vision and sticking it all together in a watchable format.
I have discovered that the practice vision that I shot will suddenly take on a life of its own and demand to be shown as a short film instead.
I have discovered that I really, really enjoy film making. My poor Nikon still camera has been slightly neglected in favour of a second hand video camera and I have been hoovering up vision left, right and centre.
Yesterday we all had to present our work to our teacher Glen Dunn and our colleagues. I wasn’t prepared for how nervous I felt presenting my short film to my class. I am cheerful, outgoing, opinionated, wisecracking and flippant. I am also intensely private which is a bit of a contradiction as I am a gregarious show off with theatrical tendencies. I rarely get nervous, stressed yes, nervous no.
My ceramic work is what it is.
All my emotional energy goes into the clay and afterwards I am drained. Even though my artist statements are usually quite emotional, my inner thoughts aren’t really out there on display next to my pots.
With this first film I made I was giving people a glimpse into myself. I was really sharing what I see in an unambiguous manner and I think that I was so nervous because I really wanted people to like what I had done. As opposed to my ceramic work where I just want people to respond to my work and I am not really fussed whether people like the work or not.
I am sure that I will get over it though and soon my film work will be the same as my ceramic work, where the response is enough, but it was interesting to analyse my feelings towards this first film.
Anyhow enough babble. I have uploaded the film to Vimeo. This is the first draft, is that the right terminology? Do films have drafts or edits?
This is the first version of my first film. Drive.
I am interested in what you think about it.
Drive from Kim Foale on Vimeo.
Welcome to my life. Nothing is ever simple. And I wouldn’t have it any other way really.
I am doing a class called creative concept development. The aim of this eleven week class is to allow us the freedom to develop an idea that is separate from our current work. An idea that will inform our future work practice beyond what we are doing now.
I have decided to make a short film.
Initially I wanted to make a fishing film where “The Spouse” or David caught a trout. I wanted to have this film showcase the gorgeous natural beauty of Tasmania, the excitement and thrill of catching a fish and the release of the lucky fish back into the lake.
I wanted to send this film to my friends in Massachusetts as well as share it here, with you on my blog.
But…
I just couldn’t get rid of the idea that it was a little bit boring, that it was just a bit too safe. I justified it to myself by saying that it would teach me the skills that I needed to make the dragon egg film in february, learn to walk Kimmy and all that.
Whilst inside my head mutant zombie fish were lurking. Killer fish banging on my mind saying, “Let us out! Let us out!”
So on the drive home I let the killer zombie, mutant fish out to play.
“The Spouse” thinks I am mad but that is nothing new and after his sixth beer last night he agreed to star in my film and be killed by a mutant fish. YAY.
So the idea is this, a man is fishing in a beautiful seaside location when he catches a large fish, he lands the fish and as he bends down to pick the fish up it suddenly transforms into a mutant killer and goes for his throat. He tries to fight the fish off but to no avail and and he dies a gory death.
Problems kept on popping up but they were easily solved. I thought of making the killer fish out of papier-mache but Veronica thought the water might wreck the fish. I also needed an oil rig, a couple of explosions, some oily water, a soundtrack and I probably will need a bex and a good lie down.
Last night I bought four blow up dolphins, a giant sea horse and an octopus from ebay, I can make the oil rig out of lego, I am sure I can find an explosion online, though I wish I had some crackers. David has said he will compose the music for the film. If I need some scorched earth a neighbour down the road has been burning off and I will ask them if I can film their front yard.
This is going to be so much fun. What do you think? Do you want to watch my film as well? Do you have any suggestions?
I adore the moon, absolutely love it. The sight of a full moon makes me shiver with happiness. I had taken a couple of photos of the moon last night in preparation for the lunar eclipse and they were horrible, boring, lifeless photos of a white globe in the sky.
Luckily for me and for you as well, I have a very clever and supremely patient daughter who talked me through the aperture and shutter speed settings on the camera. I was pressing buttons and twirling knobs and nothing was changing when voila I magically found the right combination of sideclick,press and twirl and the aperture and shutter speed revealed themselves to me.
So without further ado and a great big round of applause to Veronica, she of the sleepless nights and cloudy skies, here are my photos of the lunar eclipse over Tasmania.
and for those of you who this technical stuff means anything I used a Nikon D90, freehand with a 200mm lens, aperture of 8 and shutter speed of 800.
The full moon just before the eclipse.
The beginnings of the eclipse.
It is all happening by now and my nose was very very cold, luckily for me I could keep on racing back inside to thaw out.
This last shot was the moon just before sunrise at about 6.30 am on a frosty Sunday morning.
