Degree Show videos

Degree Show Videos

Hendre & Llandaff

For my final pieces I wanted to do an installation that combined all the mediums I have been working with whilst exploring site specific. I primarily wanted 2 video projections to be the main aspect.

Videos

Using video I wanted to capture two sites that held strong memories to me. I also wanted to capture an urban and rural site to highlight the difference between the two. For my rural site I chose Hendre Lake and the surrounding areas as it holds the most memories to me as I grew up there.

In the Memory Series, ‘Jane’, ‘Joe’, ‘Matt’, ‘Ello & La’ films, they each end with a 360 degree rotation of the location to show the environment. I wanted this 360 degree rotation to be one of the main aspects of my ‘Hendre’ and ‘Llandaff’ videos as these sites are where the memory happened.

Therefore for the ‘Hendre’ video I went to a nearby field where there is an old concrete slab that is covered in wild plants and moss. When I grew up here I used to come to this slab to sit no matter how I felt. I would come here to get away from my house, or even go there when I was feeling good and just wanted to sit in peace. I would watch sunrises and sunsets here alone or with friends. For the film I did a series of rotations and after one rotation, edit in a close up shot from the area. This is explained in more detail in the photography book ‘On Site’, that is back up work to be shown with the degree work. The close up shots include shots of reflections, reeds, the sky, reeds, the stream, and long grass. I chose the close up shots on things that interested me and things that held memories to me. For example, there is a close up shot of a warning sign by the stream. I included this, as I liked the contrast of the sharpness of the metal compared to the movement of the water in the background. Other shots, such as the reeds and long grass hold memories to me from childhood when I used to run and hide through the grass. When filming Hendre it was a very windy day and I thought the wind would be a problem with the sound recording on the h2 Zoom. I managed to place the Zoom device in a sheltered place and lowered the setting so it wouldn’t pick up so much sound. I had to edit the sound a bit, to edit out any wind distortion, but I am generally happy with how the sound turned out. I had practice from my last assessment piece, in which the wind distortion was a problem.

Llandaff site

Originally I wanted to choose a site that reflected urban/city life. This was difficult to film as in most the places I went there would be a passer by that would acknowledge the camera in a crude way. This happened in 2 spots I chose, in Queen Street and in a skate park in Dinas Powys. I instead chose a site that although quite rural still had some aspects of urban life. This site was in Llandaff where the River Taff goes under a main road bridge. I used to there as a child and for the past few years I have walked along the River Taff every summer. What I liked about this site is that to get to it you have to walk along a main road, then the moment you walk down a flight of stairs the noise from the road is absorbed by all the plants and trees that are surrounding a path and the river. I chose the spot just under the bridge where there is a rocky embankment. From here we are surrounded by wildlife and the River, yet the bridge is visible and the noise is a constant low sound in the background. When doing the 360 rotations here I liked how you can hear the sounds of wildlife and the river and yet when the camera has turned 180, the bridge and main road come into view. The low sound of the traffic is a constant sound in the background, and seeing the concrete bridge shows man made mixed with natural. When filming the close up shots I included a mixture of natural objects and foreign objects, I did this to show the contrast of urban and rural.

Photography

Along with the video I have a photography book, ‘On site’ that shows documentation the sites that I filmed at, it also includes in depth memories from the places.

Documentation

From each of the two sites I bought back samples of the water found there. The water was taken from Hendre Lake and River Taff. This water was taken in a bottle and later put on paper. This trace can be seen in my independent study and in frames by the video projections.