Long-famous glories Immemorial shames

The brief ‘words in motion’ asked us to explore the combination of words and image through movement with the end result of a 90 second moving image piece. We were asked to explore the manipulation of words and image whilst evoking the atmosphere and emotion of the poem. The content of this moving image piece was to be an artist and a poem or song, selected at random; we selected David Hockney and Wilfred Owen’s ‘Spring Offensive’.

We selected the poem ‘Spring Offensive’ by Wilfred Owen, because we felt there was plenty of vivid imagery to work with and a definite sense of narrative. We liked that there was a build up in the poem- both in pace and mood. After selecting this poem, we realised that it would take longer than 90 seconds to read the poem in its entirety; this meant that we had to trim down the poem, which meant considering what was pivotal in setting the mood of the poem and yet made sure it flowed and made sense. We had to part with some lines that we were quite attached to, which was a shame, even though it was a necessary part of the process. However, we feel the lines we kept for our piece conveyed the poem adequately.

Sunday 19th February Today we went to London to visit the Imperial War Museum and see the David Hockney exhibition at the RWA. It gave us an understanding of WW1, which was when ‘Spring Offensive’ was written. Also, it provided us with an in-depth view of Hockney’s landscapes including his more recent moving image work. Seeing his works first-hand allowed us to experience the original sense of emotion Hockney intended to convey through use of scale, colour and technique.

We collected our ideas together in the form of a mood board, to portray the overall mood of the poem visually. To do this we looked into typefaces we may use, and selected one called Quaver which we thought was under-stated, and wouldn’t distract from the words of the poem.

We had initially looked at David Hockney’s work and thought that the way he occasionally used grids to divide up both paintings and photographs could be applied to our own piece in the form of splitting the screen. This way, we could show two quite paradoxical scenes at once, suggesting the unrest that is portrayed in the poem.

We thought Hockney’s idea of revisiting and painting the same place again resonated with the narrative of the poem. The poem itself goes through a change of pace and time, so we thought using time of day to symbolise this would be especially successful.

The colours we were looking at were quite subdued to coincide with the feeling of unnerving calm throughout the poem. The soldiers in the poem are apparently “at ease”, and yet there is an undercurrent of the imminence of war throughout that the reader is aware of. To get a sense of colour we referred to the works of Rothko, since his work enabled us to also convey the emotion we were trying to encapsulate.

Narrative for the moving piece;

1. ‘They fed, and lying easy, were at ease…’The first few lines of the poem will be suspended, relatively high up and dangling. We will start filming the words in morning light, perhaps with a slight breeze, to set the mood of calm. 2. ‘Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass…’This next line is slightly more ominous, perhaps we could add a sound in at this point to suggest unrest. This will be filmed in a similar light to the first, and around a similar place, just slightly lower down since all the lines repre-sent a similar mood and section of the poem. 3. ‘Where even the little brambles would not yield…’This will be in a similar style to the first two, again represents the same segment of the poem. The time of day filmed will be similar, if slightly getting darker. And the placement of the words will be slightly lower too. Gradually changing. 4. ‘Till like a cold gust thrilled the little world…’This is where the mood of the poem changes. The words get really low and the time of day changes to significantly darker. The situation of the letters stays the same, yet they’ll be on the floor. Perhaps get to the end of the stanza and fall to the floor to show the change in pace. The sounds will also orchestrate this. 5. ‘So, soon they topped the hill and raced together…’Here the scene will change. The poem gets some pace now, and so the situation will have to change, perhaps we could move the letters? Have the scene moving, to suggest danger. The pace quickens because of the danger. One idea is to harness the words on to the camera, so that they’re legible but the scene changes. Darker.6. ‘Of them who running on that last high place…’Start the stanza off with movement, ‘running’, and when it gets to the last line of ‘some say God caught them even before they fell’ have the words stop, everything suddenly stop, and perhaps have the words drop/fall once they are read, and the whole scene fades to black. Camera pans down. No words, just blackness. 7. ‘Long famous glories, immemorial shames…’Fades up to the same scene as the first stanza. Higher up again. It’s morning again, so the poem goes full circle and returns back to morning. Morning suggests clarity, seeing things again. The tree we hang them in could be somehow changed. So the words would be placed in the same place, but just slightly different. Or we could tarnish the paper words in some way, so that they’re slightly bruised, muddy, as though the words themselves have been through a lot. The scene would be the same besides this. Back to calm, wondering.

After our initial use of the typeface ‘Quaver’ on our mood board, we decided to experiment with other possible type-faces. We printed several typefaces and decided that ‘Adobe Jenson Pro’ was most suited to our poem.

For the first set of tests we did, we printed the words out on plain white paper and sewed them with white thread, with no uniform trimming style.

Once we had looked back over our initial tests, we decided that the white paper looked too bright and unnatural in the light of the sun, and so we changed it to a paper stock with a more organic aesthetic (see opposite page). This doesn’t reflect as much light or look as harsh on film.

The colour of the type was also changed to grey, to decrease the contrast against the paper. On the brown paper it started to look more natural, and was better suited to the natural surroundings we were filming in.

After experimenting with a variety of different thread colours, we chose one which was most similar to the paper, so that it wouldn’t distract from the words themselves.

During the project, we encountered some small problems. One of the problems we had was that hanging paper from thread outside often caused the words to tangle in the wind, and so we spent a large percentage of time untangling sentences from trees. We also encountered many dogs and dog walkers. On one occasion, someone set up a drum kit nearby and practiced drumming for around thirty minutes.

The area we did most of our filming was within a wooded area of Ashton Court estate. We found a tree which had many small branches stemming from it’s base, which lent themselves very well to our shots. The surrounding area consisted of small hills, dips, nettles, logs, trees & plants.

Friday 23rd March

We spent this day filming in Ashton Court woods; we picked a good spot by the tree and set up camp. Our idea was to start bright and then try to get some of the shots in the shade of the tree when the poem started to get darker in mood.

There were issues such as wind, background noise and people walking past, but we got some usable shots since it was such a clear day. We now need to try to do some film-ing at night to contrast to the day shots- to ‘do a Hockney’, so to speak.

These are some stills taken from the day of filming. Taking stills as we went along often helped to dictate the shot we filmed because it helped us decide angles and placement.

We decided we wanted to record all sounds ourselves, with the exclusion of the sound clip we had to include as a part of the brief. We collected a wide range of sounds including running water, squelching mud, piano, trumpet, drums and accordion ,and edited each sound we used in Adobe Audition.

During the poem, there were moments where the mood suddenly changed. We used these moments as short breaks, and illustrated them with a full-screen shot of nature which suggested each change. For example, the crow suggests unrest, the blurred leaves which darken suggest the imminence of battle and the puddle suggests the calm afterthe storm.

Each section of the video consisted of between three and four lines of the poem for ease of reading. Th e coinciding imagery on one side of the screen created consistency and continued the illustration of the mood. Our sound fi les were layered up during points of the moving image piece to enhance the atmosphere.

“Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass”

“Where even the little brambles would not yield”

Publication and moving image piece produced by Stephanie Weise & Emma Brown