~ Author-made videopoems ~
The Dinosaur Book is Green Fire by Brenda Clews
Canadian poet and artist Brenda Clews does it all here: drawing, filming, editing, even constructing the music. “The world is a green furor of creativity – the green fire of life,” she writes in the description at YouTube, where she provides a detailed description of her process, including this note about the music:
I created the music in a cool program, a ‘P22 Music Text Composition Generator (A free online music utility)’: http://www.p22.com/musicfont In this program, each letter has a sound. When you put text in, you can choose what BMP and instrument you’d like, and the program generates a midi file, with the sheet music. I layered my track in GarageBand 6.0.2 using different instruments, splicing and re-arranging. […]
From start to finish took about 12 hours, there were many layers, of image, text, and sound, each with filters, and I had to render a few times, which took hours, to see if what I had produced worked.
I’m Sorry I Missed Your Birthday Party by Zachary Schomburg
I keep forgetting to revisit Zachary Schomburg’s Vimeo archives and grab the videos I haven’t shared here yet. This one’s a wonderfully mysterious, brief film with an insanely meta beginning. The poem is from Schomburg’s collection Scary, No Scary.
Mashup: Kiss by Paul Portugés
Paul Portugés wrote the words and screenplay, and Cecil Hirvi supplied machinima/mashup and music, and well as providing the avatar for one of the three actors in Second Life.
the lake by Karyn Eisler
A great example of how to create anticipation in a videopoem and make reading a more urgent act. This was featured at Referential Magazine. Karyn Eisler blogs at Living ?s.
Abachan by Alastair Cook
I’ve featured a number of Alastair Cook‘s filmpoems for other poets’ work, but this is the first one he’s made for a poem of his own. It’s due to premiere at a Geopoetics conference on March 27th at John Ruskin’s house, Brentwood, in the Lake District.
Today also we bring you the full text of Alastair’s think-piece on the poetry-film genre, “The Filming of Poetry.” Please go read and add your own thoughts. This first appeared in paper form at Anon Seven last summer. Thanks to Alastair for letting me repost it.
Meet the Bluffs by Cecelia Chapman
Cecelia Chapman directed the film and wrote the text, which may be read at Referential Magazine. The soundtrack was provided by Jeff Crouch (music) and Blaine Reininger (chant). At her tumblelog, Chapman contextualizes the film:
She does look like that art director that fired you, he the coke dealer at last years xmas party. But they are the inhabitants of apartments about to fall into the sea. MEET THE BLUFFS. They want the good life. Entertaining their friends drinking local cabs on the terrace watching the great fireball hit the horizon. Jogs on the beach. But wait! There is no more beach!
For a long time it has been apparent that the left side of the continental shelf, balanced on a plate that likes to shift, is slipping into the sea. But never doubt the selling power of California real estate agents and developers! Despite the bulldozers, workers hanging outside smoking, cranes throwing giant rocks into the sea to defend the cliff, an infinite variety of caterpillar equipment parked in the private parking lot, warning signs all over the area, midnight evacuations in soul-humbling storms to the apartment down the block, the apartments continue to rent. And the mile long cliff of small gated private communities continues to fall into the sea when the big north storms hit.
Three Poems by Steven McCabe
The poems are “Speed-dial a Rainbow,” “Bough,” and “Salome’s Veil.” McCabe directs with cinematography by Eric Gerard and editing by Konrad Skreta.
Anansi Hides the Moon by Brenda Clews
“Poem, painting and video by Brenda Clews,” as it says in the closing credits. Brenda’s process notes at her blog are almost as interesting as the result:
A painting, ‘Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones,’ hanging on a wall. Sunlight moving through wind-waving branches falls through a window onto it. You can also see the shadows of the window itself. That morning I was absorbed watching the light and shadows dancing quietly over the painting and videotaped it. Then, on an evening walk I came across a light on a patio with a thick white gauzy curtain around it, and shot some footage with my iPhone video camera. Later, playing with the footage, I added the billowing curtain and its light next to the painting of doubles and shadows. Then I cut sections of a photograph of the painting out, animated them and added them to the film. Finally, pondering on what I had produced, I wrote a whimsical poem of the African trickster spider god, Anansi, and wove it in with handwritten notes.
Breathe by Emma Passmore
A few months back I posted the French version of this, because Emma indicated that restrictions imposed by some of the festivals she’d entered it in might prevent her from sharing the English version for a while. But in a discussion of filmmaking approaches at the forum, she mentioned that she had in fact been able to post it, as you can see. Again, this won the Public Jury Prize for Best Film at the 2010 Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. Visit Emma’s website for more
Seasonally Affected by Hannah Stephenson
This film, called “Seasons,” was made in response to a poem Hannah just wrote and posted to her blog last Thursday. The anonymous filmmaker grow365 says, “This is part of my 365 project to do something creative every day. You can see other experiments at http://grow365.posterous.com […] It’s the first time I’ve ever done this sort of thing.” The soundtrack incorporates Erwin Schulhoff’s Sonata for Solo Violin, Second Movement, performed by Daniel Hope, which means of course that she’s in risk of YouTube stripping it out.
The poet herself also posted a video of the poem, also her first such effort. It’s extremely lo-fi, made with the camera on her laptop, but more imaginative than at least 90% of poem videos made in that fashion.
(The poet moved to Columbus, Ohio in December, and I keep wanting to shout, Put on a damn coat and hat, Hannah! You’re not in L.A. anymore!)
Earth Eaters by Marc Atkinson
http://www.vimeo.com/19103267
Leslie Deere posted the video with this intriguing description of the process:
Collaboration with filmaker marc atkinson. i did the sound design
originally a science fiction poem by marc atkinson.
turned into a film and a book with illustrations by roisin dunne.
we buried the 16mm film and unearthed it two weeks later.
screened at the whitechapel gallery in london for dee sekar’s decasia late night event.
The credits also note the use of archive and home movie footage from the Prelinger Archives. The video appears to be a short for a 15-minute film, judging from Leslie’s website.
Here’s Mark Atkinson’s website.
Vinyl Poesie by Christoph Bruns
An interesting found-videopoem experiment. I’m guessing the maker is German, but I’m not really sure.
This is a stop motion video i created around summer last year. It is a selfwritten poem created out of my vinyl collection. i looked out for interesting words and formed this little passages.
Don’t miss a post
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy