Posts Tagged: Nic S.

Snow Moon by Erica Goss

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This is the second installment in the 12 Moons collaborative videopoem series produced by Swoon (Marc Neys), Kathy McTavish and Nic S. with texts by Erica Goss for publication in Atticus Review. Marc notes that

A large part of the images for this one came from Bea Mariano (from http://futuretransits.com/video/mistake-momentum-memory)

I really liked the concentration that oozed from these, so I asked if I could re-edit some parts of it for this videopoem. A big thanks to her.

Just as in Wolf Moon, I wanted the ending to take us somewhere completely different. I wanted water, overpowering, and loads of it.

I can’t express enough how much fun it is to work on videopoems with this kind of building blocks.

Read the rest (and visit Atticus Review for full bios of each participant).

Telegram by Amy MacLennan

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For all you lovers, here’s a videopoem by the indefatigable Belgian filmmaker Swoon (Marc Neys).

Since the beginning of The Poetry Storehouse last year, a gentle stream of new arrivals and voices filled up the shelves. It was about time I went shopping for words again.
It’s such a fun place to nose. Different styles, themes, voices and ideas… This time the poem ‘Telegram’ by Amy MacLennan caught my eye. […]

The images came fairly easy. I wanted a very subtle, understated almost, scenery. slow movements, details of bodyparts and a slow veil of colour…
The video practically made itself…it felt right from the start. A good sign.

The poem first appeared online in Linebreak, and in print in MacLennan’s chapbook Weathering (Uttered Chaos Press, 2012).

Nic S. (who provided the reading used in the soundtrack) interviewed Amy MacLennan for our ongoing series of interviews at the Moving Poems Forum with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse. Here’s what MacLennan had to say about “Telegram”:

I never expected to hear that kind of music, see that kind of video, hear that kind of voice merged into something that I had provided words for. The pacing was crazy interesting for me. I saw other things in my own poem that I wouldn’t have thought before because I was too attached to the rhythms of “Telegram.” I watch this now and think, “Wow. My words were the beginning to THIS? Oh my goodness!”

Wolf Moon by Erica Goss

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As featured in Atticus Review, this is the first of the 12 Moons videopoetry series, a collaboration between California-based poet (and videopoetry columnist) Erica Goss; filmmaker Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon; composer/cellist Kathy McTavish; and poetry reader extraordinaire Nic S.. See Erica’s January column at Connotation Press for more on the project. She says, in part:

This artistic collaboration has been an exhilarating experience for me. Part of the fun was waiting to see what the others came up with. I knew I had to get the poems written and delivered, so I made writing them a top priority. As soon as one was finished, I sent it off, and waited to be delighted. Apart from emails, a few phone and Skype calls, we worked independently, each contributing our part.

Marc goes into a bit of detail about the making of this first film in the series at his blog:

I wanted to show only one image: a woman who has, one time, lost all but is still there and still very much a woman.
Let the viewer feel intrusive, like they’re watching a private ritual.
Kathy sent me several snippets of sounds and loops I could play with. Looking for a ominous soundscape to lay Nic’s reading in, I first created a track.

For the ending I wanted a contrast in sound and image.
I chose the view of someone walking on sharp and difficult stones without a clear path.

The Shipwright’s Love Song by Jo Bell

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A new film by Swoon, who blogged some process notes. Here’s a snippet:

Reading this poem I immediately knew (felt) what I wanted for this video.
I had images made last year (visiting old boats with Alastair Cook) in Antwerp (left screen) and earlier this year on St. Andrew’s beach (right screen)
The images were ‘tested’ on several tracks.
Maximum Suspicion‘ worked the best with the images, but I still needed a voice.

Nic S. (still the most spot-on reader I know) was willing to participate and she provided me with a great recording almost the same day.

This is Swoon’s entry in the Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival Competition‘s “Four by Four” contest, in which filmmakers are invited to make a video of three minutes or less in response to one of four poems, “The Shipwright’s Love Song” among them. Jo Bell is — I love this — “the UK’s Canal Laureate, appointed by the Poetry Society and the Canal and River Trust.”

Chanson d’automne (Autumn Song) by Paul Verlaine

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When a sighing begins
In the violins
Of the autumn-song,

My heart is drowned
In the slow sound
Languorous and long

Pale as with pain,
Breath fails me when
The hours tolls deep.
My thoughts recover
The days that are over
And I weep.

And I go
Where the winds know,
Broken and brief,
To and fro,
As the winds blow
A dead leaf.

(trans. by Arthur Symons, 1902)

For alternate translations and analysis of the original, see textetc.com.

British filmmaker Rachel Laine shot this on a Canaon 600D and edited in Fainl Cut Pro and Logic. It uses music by Carillion and Nic S.’s reading from Pizzicati of Hosanna.