For further details on this project please contact Abandon Normal Devices
To find out more about the North West Film Archive please visit here.

Sam Meech’s blog is: http://smeech.co.uk/

And Jenna Collins’s website is here: www.jennacollins.com

Image from 'Moorland Incident', 1951, held by the North West Film Archive

Working with a selection of amateur fiction footage held by North West Film Archive, MORE REAL THAN THE EVERYDAY WORLD reflects on the possibility of collaborating with the original filmmakers through their films, asking what we can know about them through their narrative constructions, and what the writing of these constructions might entail and articulate.

The above seems to me to be what has come through the process of making the work and into the final piece (see ‘Two Propositions’ for a starting point). Thanks to Russell Moss for the camera work, and Paul Carr and Eddie Farrell for the additional music, ‘Dumka’.

Seaming To is a vocalist, multi-intrumentalist, composer and producer based in London and Manchester. She studied at the Royal College of Music in London before continuing operatic studies under Teresa Cahill at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Seaming has toured nationally and internationally with a range of projects and has performed at venues such as the National Theatre, the Barbican and the RSC; festivals including the London Jazz Festival, Ether, Meltdown, and international festivals including Chalon, Transmusicales, and Sonar.

Seaming’s collaborations include the Bordeaux Symphony Orchestra, The Cinematic Orchestra, Avanti Display, Matthew Bourne and film-maker Michael England. Her work with the bands Mayming, Toolshed and Homelife have led to the release of numerous albums, appearances on BBC Radio, and a Guardian review by Carrie O’Grady who wrote:

‘To only has to open her mouth for her astounding, operatic voice to float out…Her singing is beautiful enough to make you wish the rest of the musicians would drop out of their groove for a moment.’

Seaming participated in the Jerwood/PRS Foundation Take Five Initiative and was the recipient of a PRSF Atom Award. She is currently developing a project with the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester, has been writing and producing solo material and her album is due out end of this year.

www.seaming.co.uk

The story is set in a post-nuclear England, 2000 years from now, where society is stuck in a sort of second Iron Age, with remnants of 20th Century english language. It follows a young boy, Riddley, who is trying to interpret the surviving myths of ‘Time Way Back’ and the ’1Big1′ in his own way in order to make sense of how his own people have developed and where they are heading. At one point in the book he begins to realise how advanced society was before the ‘Bad Time’, and how far technologically it has fallen:

O what we ben! And what we come to …How cud any 1 not want to get that shining Power back from time back way back? How cud any 1 not want to be like them what had boats in the air and picters on the wind? How cud any 1 not want to see them shining weals terning?

In many ways this is the same lament, or regret, as experienced by the Noah character at the end of my film. After years of living a utopian life in the promised land (which looks suspiciously like a 1950s holiday resort), he has a recurring nightmare about what has been lost in the process of the journey, and his own complicity in destroying the past. He also has a glimpse of strange new nightmare of a future in which things fall apart in bizarre new ways.

Sam

Rock My Religion (1982-84)
1982-84, 55:27 min, b&w and color, sound

www.ubu.com/film/graham_rock.html

Inside he writes,
‘We will never realize quite clearly enough what a shameful thing death is. In the end, we never try to fight it head on; doctors and scientists merely establish a pact with it, they fight it on points of detail, they slow it down by a few months, a few years, but it all amounts to nothing. What we need to do is attack the roots of the problem in a big collective effort in which each of us will work towards his own survival and everyone else’s.’ 1 (2006, p25)

Charles Merewether, referring to Boltanski’s text writes,

‘The text is suffused with pathos: the archival impulse to preserve the remains of life after death exposes its own vulnerability and futility.’ 2 (2006, p10/11)

I think the text also has humour, or points to where the absurd humour in the activity of archiving arises.

1. How are accents made,  historically and geographically?

2. How does the body make an accent (the mechanics of the voice I guess)?

3. How do people connect their identity to their accent?

Accent change:

4. Who wants to change their accent and for what sorts of reasons?

5. What makes it hard to do?

6. What makes it easy to do?

7. How do you change your accent? (where do you begin and what do you need to bear in mind?)

Accent destruction:

8. How do you loose an a accent?

9. Can you keep it up?

10. Who wants to loose an accent?

11. What is hard about it? (you mentioned something about loosing  your identity)

12. Are accents changing? What conditions cause the erosion of an accent?

This is footage of the night sky above Manchester, shot with Russell Moss in July 2010. I have been led to believe that the Stone Roses 1989 ‘Fools Gold‘ might be about the golden (sludgy yellow/brown) light that hangs over the city. Someone told me that years ago, I can’t remember who but it made sense and stuck.

I am now moving towards the final edit with my observations of the amateur narrative fiction films in the archive; the final work will be the place where these observations and ideas are worked out in full. As part of this process I have been working with notions/phenomena that in some way run parallel to these ideas, either in the narrative details or a more general sense about the activity of the film makers or the archive. These ideas, sometimes marked by an approximate visual might not make it into the final edit, but allow the thoughts to develop.

The North West Film Archive is an accumulation of film that features the people, places and activities of the North West of England, a specific geographic location. The light that forms over the city is also an accumulation that can be thought of geographically, as a sort of 1:1 map of where people are. I have also been researching accent along the same lines, with specific focus on how one can loose or acquire an accent. Each line of inquiry contains specific ideas and problems that make them different from each other, and interesting to me.

An edited down section of an article on light pollution measurement:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/resources/darksky/3304011.html

The Bortle Dark-Sky Scale
Excellent? Typical? Urban? Use this nine-step scale to rate the sky conditions at any observing site.
by John E. Bortle

Thirty years ago one could find truly dark skies within an hour’s drive of major population centers. Today you often need to travel 150 miles or more. In my own observing career I have watched the extent to which ever-growing light pollution has sullied the heavens. In years long past I witnessed nearly pristine skies from parts of the highly urbanized northeastern United States. This is no longer possible.

To help observers judge the true darkness of a site, I have created a nine-level scale. It is based on nearly 50 years of observing experience. I hope it will prove both enlightening and useful to observers — though it may stun or even horrify some! Should it come into wide use, it would provide a consistent standard for comparing observations. Researchers would also be better able to assess the plausibility of an unusual or marginal observation. All around, it could be a boon to those of us who regularly scan the heavens.

Rate Your Skies

Class 1: Excellent dark-sky site. The zodiacal light, gegenschein, and zodiacal band are all visible — the zodiacal light to a striking degree, and the zodiacal band spanning the entire sky. Airglow (a very faint, naturally occurring glow most evident within about 15° of the horizon) is readily apparent. If you are observing on a grass-covered field bordered by trees, your telescope, companions, and vehicle are almost totally invisible.

Class 2: Typical truly dark site. Airglow may be weakly apparent along the horizon. The zodiacal light is still bright enough to cast weak shadows just before dawn and after dusk, and its color can be seen as distinctly yellowish when compared with the blue-white of the Milky Way.

Class 3: Rural sky. Some indication of light pollution is evident along the horizon. Clouds may appear faintly illuminated in the brightest parts of the sky near the horizon but are dark overhead.

Class 4: Rural/suburban transition. Fairly obvious light-pollution domes are apparent over population centers in several directions. The zodiacal light is clearly evident but doesn’t even extend halfway to the zenith at the beginning or end of twilight.

Class 5: Suburban sky. Only hints of the zodiacal light are seen on the best spring and autumn nights. The Milky Way is very weak or invisible near the horizon and looks rather washed out overhead. Light sources are evident in most if not all directions. Over most or all of the sky, clouds are quite noticeably brighter than the sky itself.

Class 6: Bright suburban sky. No trace of the zodiacal light can be seen, even on the best nights. Clouds anywhere in the sky appear fairly bright.

Class 7: Suburban/urban transition. The entire sky background has a vague, grayish white hue. Strong light sources are evident in all directions. Clouds are brilliantly lit.

Class 8: City sky. The sky glows whitish gray or orangish, and you can read newspaper headlines without difficulty.

Class 9: Inner-city sky. The entire sky is brightly lit, even at the zenith.

A few (3 or 4) stories from the amateur narrative fiction film will be in my own project, but retold as text or voice. This requires a number of decisions, which became fully apparent when I began the re-write.

An example; The Last Gift begins with a fade up on an establishing wide shot of a large country house in large grounds, and fades out again. Cut to an interior with a medium shot of a door opening and the butler entering the room.

This describes the film itself, taking nothing for granted but a basic film vernacular, which is one way to retell the story, as is any path through the following;

The film                                             takes place in                       a large country house.
The story                                            took place in                        what appears to be a -
The narrative                                    is set in                                  large country house
The sequence of events                   begins in                               a house just outside -
The tragic sequence of events                                                       Stockport

The film + is set in + what appears to be a large country house = states the visible and makes the film as it has been made (rather than the story that precedes it) the point of reference. Film can be fictional or not, but ‘set in’ suggests a staging. It would mean not correcting any holes in the story where the film itself fails to show what it needs to, although what that missing thing might be is obvious enough to the viewer.

The sequence of events + took place in + a house just outside Stockport = enters into the narrative and does not admit to being a construct of one particular sort or another. Nicely in the past, it has a sense of resolution about it. ‘A house just outside Stockport’ includes information not given in the film itself. I could take this further and expand on numerous aspects of the story that I know, but the film, due to the time in which it was made, cannot. For example, I could include the buildings current use.

There are numerous configurations, some that work in a normal grammatical way, others that jar but do something useful. Without getting lost in semantics I need to decide on the basics such as; to preference the film or the story; to correct or to leave; to further dramatise or to deadpan.