All too often we are told that everyone is starved for time. So if you work in any kind of creative field that is time based (durational such as film, TV, video, audio) the mantra is often “shorter, quicker, tighter, can we get it down to 3 minutes?!” This can often mean that every video is cut like a music video, or that stories are told badly, with the desire for short duration more important than honouring the focus of that story.
When I was approached to work on a film that offered the opposite of this, I (slowly) jumped at the chance.
You can now watch that film by Jim Stephenson and Laura Mark that takes a slow mediative look at Piers Taylor and Invisible Studio. Creating the soundtrack was an exercise in restraint, leaving space for the natural sounds around Piers’ work spaces and enhancing the lingering shots captured by Jim. I hope I managed to capture some of the philosophy around Piers Taylor’s work too. The simplicity and sketch like quality stood out for me and was something I tried to portray through the use of subtle treatments and simple, sometimes glacial paced movement.
There is a Kickstarter currently active to fund further films in this series. Jim and Laura are keen to involve me at an earlier stage in future films, bringing together the process of capturing location sound and the creation of the soundtrack. That is something I’m particularly excited about, blurring the lines between the two.