Production history around: Film the Light

‘Film the Light’ is my first piece which was created with no intention of it existing in a public, accessible sense, but rather ‘unlisted’ and only accessible via this article. The reason is honestly because I don’t think it is very entertaining or interesting from a ‘film’ perspective, but that does not mean it has no value.

This film, like ‘Bug Video on my Phone’ was created by quickly capturing a moment — a sudden chance encounter.

I had actually recorded a light effect like this before and used it in my film ‘Under Ice’. The footage for that sat in my PC for several months before eventually becoming an integrated into a film idea. There is a part of me that wanted to do the same with this, but I thought the context around this was interesting enough to write about.

I discovered the light when getting up to attend to a knock at the door (a delivery driver had just dropped off a Christmas present for my wife). The light was on the bathroom door, just outside of our office.

So, I rushed to the front door and back, then quickly set up the tripod. The light lingered for a little, and then quickly it disappeared.

It is so interesting the exact conditions required for this to happen.

So firstly, we have a window in our upstairs passage that lets in some natural light. It is on a wall that has been giving us endless issues with damp. The joys of owning a home in the UK.

Secondly, I went through a massive physical media collection phase (mostly DVDs). They were just fun to collect, like playing cards which you could watch. My local Oxfam has a deal where you can get 8 DVDs for £3, so it wasn’t that expensive either — cheaper than a pack of Pokémon cards! And, what happens with deals like this, you find 3 things you really are interested in, and you buy 5 others because you want to make up the rest of the way to the deal. I acquired a few…

It got to the point where I knew I was not going to rewatch most of them, and since my wife and I had just bought our house, being able to enjoy the space seemed more appealing than having a mostly useless cube of plastic. So, I decided to donate them. The image above isn’t all of them either, as I had already removed a few boxes at that point.

While I did donate a majority of them, I kept the favourites (Lawnmower Man, Strange Days) as well as any local production DVDs as I find those extremely interesting and I feel they would be way harder to find again online.

Now, the annoying thing is even though I had re-donated a majority of the DVDs, I still had all the 22l ‘Really Useful Boxes’. I did not want to get rid of these, as I felt that they could be filled with random bits we were more sentimental over and stored away. Well… It turns out that the boxes take up the same amount of space, regardless of if they are full or not. While I tried to figure out what I was going to do, I left the boxes in the passage.

And because these boxes were left here, the light shone through the little window, through the boxes, and created the cool effect on the door.

So, the light effect was both because of chance, but also because I decided to clear out my house. It was like a nice little reward for being productive.

Now it will probably never do that again, in that spot. The boxes are all in the roof.

I have been interested in lights behaving like this for a while. In particular, when I go to the loo in the middle of the night, I use my phone torch rather than putting all the lights on — I don’t want to flashbang myself. When I do, the light passes through these big glass balls (glass floats for fishing) projecting some really interesting colours onto the wall.

Actually, before this occurrence, there is an artist called Alison Stott who I met at Arts University Plymouth’s Postgraduate Open Studio event on the 20th of June 2024. She uses glass and light to create art. We discussed making a film together, but you know how time goes.

The audio used in the piece is ‘CD_VIE_005_EXP01’ by kevp888. The audio makes it sound like a bunch of crystals in a cave. What is weird, I am realising while writing this, is I have never been in a cave full of crystals. Do they really sound like this? Where does this come from? The noise of rubbing your finger around a glass?

The combination of sounds and visuals also makes it appear as if some type of alien technology is being charged up. It is a very interesting mirage effect. I wonder if that is because of the light innately, or because of the trees outside the window being shaken about, or what.

It is likely that this is the last article I have made for the year.

…

Hidden personal update:

I have moved from the University of Plymouth to Falmouth University, which means I need to do a lot of the admin work again. Currently I need to do my CoR to ensure that I actually end up doing a PhD rather than an MPhil. I have made enough films to write about, I have completed my workshop which has great supportive results, and I have reached a healthy wordcount. I also have read 2 books which I have yet to incorporate my reading notes into my thesis as of yet. All is looking up. My hope is to enter my writing up year a year early. I want to complete my PhD and hop onto writing more papers for academic journals. I have submitted to Screenworks, and am currently writing a piece for MIRAJ. So yeah, chugging along.

If you are reading this, best of luck out there.