About Videosmithery

This blog is meant as a record of my research, thinking and practical experiments in video whilst undertaking a residency at the North West Film Archive as part of the Abandon Normal Devices festival of New Cinema and Digital Culture. You can see more of my day to day work as a freelancer based in the North West at www.smeech.co.uk

The aim of the residency is, on paper, to produce a 20 minute film for performance with a live soundtrack. My own intentions are to develop something beyond a straight-forward film, and more towards a colourful, rhythmic, immersive experience for the audience, across multiple screens. I want the film to be fluid, un-fixed, capable of incorporating live images, of being played like an instrument rather than a linear media. I want it to tell a story, but not consciously, and to give a sense of place and time, but not sentimentally (there are many better people than myself for these kinds of film).

The residency is under the title ‘Gleaners’. To glean something means to perceive something new from the information and materials to hand. With such tasks one must come with an approach to find a way into the material, a knife to disect that information,  and an open mind to the revelations inside.I hope that writing this blog will keep me in dialogue with myself and my intentions, and that when the plan goes out the window, it is because I threw it out, and not because i didn’t nail it down.