mana dzimtene.

 evaluation: 

I'm pleasantly surprised with the outcome. I was really excited to use archive footage, and to tell a story that people aren't really aware of. I enjoyed filming the visuals for my interpretation of my grandmother's stories as I had to get creative with it. I used a dictionary my grandmother used to have in 40s, and some photos I took with a film camera outside my home. I used a white flower and red inks, and a mirror for the Forest Brothers part, and footage I filmed earlier this year whilst it was snowing of an old Soviet Orthodox church.

I decided that in part two I would let the subtitles tell the real stories while I'd direct my speech at only Latvians as it's quite personal and talks about the recent years and how things seem to be getting worse again over time. I cite a few personal experiences within this part, but they are meant to bring Latvia's attention to these problems without alarming anyone else, hence the choice. I suppose in some way it's a trick as two audiences would get two very different things from that part of the film.

As for text and my voiceover, I managed to cut down its usage to have more breathing space which ended up being the perfect decision to make the film more free-flowing and easier to digest, whilst also allowing a beautiful interlude dedicated to The Baltic Way and its amazing story.

All in all, I'd say I'm proud of it because I think it represents my homeland perfectly without being too overwhelming, and giving a bit of ambiguity at the end - just as it feels like to everyone at home at the moment. I felt passionate about the subject matter, so I hope it came across, although I'm still unhappy with my voice as I feel it's below standard quality.

divi miljoni.

After the tutorial last Friday I realised there was still a lot I had to do. The busy narrative seemed to be too packed, leaving barely any breathing space for the people watching. I was also unhappy with my voice, so I re-recorded the whole script from beginning.

I also made the decision to get rid of one part. The new narrative was now: part one (the intro and my grandmother's stories), the baltic way and part two (the real stories). I found that having a sort of interlude allowed the film to be much easier to process. Previously I had packed it too full of information, almost making it into a short documentary instead of an experimental film. Thankfully I realised this early enough to change its structure.

For the titles I decided to go for white and yellow, which were the colours on the cover of the old English - Latvian dictionary I had. For the opening title, I made sure we could see the red, white, red through it as those are the colours of Latvia's flag.

For the subtitles I went for yellow, as where shots would be lighter white would be impossible to see and I wanted a consistency within the film.

The two shots above are actually my favourite ones as one is shot by me for the Forest Brothers story, and the other one is taken from the archives, and it happened unintentionally but I placed my white flower on a mirror and dripped some red ink on it, only to then realise that the archive featured a shot of red flowers on wet ground that reflected their image. I thought that was really quite powerful.

part two: latviešu valodā.

 / 

 Atklāti sakot, man būtu žēl redzēt visu varoņu sejas, ja viņi būtu dzīvi un redzētu Latvijas pašreizējo grimšanu no patriotisma augstumiem uz valsti, kur jaunieši bez krievu valodas zināšanām nevar atrast darbu, kur visapkārt redzamas oranži melnas lentītes un citi skaļi atskaņo Padomju himnu, nejūtot nemazāko kauna izjūtu par savām rīcībām. It kā viņi nesaprastu Latvijas ciešanas un Latvijas zaudējumus, kamēr tajā deportēja patriotus.

 / 

 In all honesty I'd be sad to see the faces of all the heroes if they were alive and saw Latvia's current descent from the heights of patriotism to a country, where teenagers without the knowledge of Russian language can't find jobs, where orange-black ribbons are seen all around and others loudly play the Soviet anthem, not feeling any shame about their actions. As if they didn't understand Latvia's pain and Latvia's loss, whilst most of the patriots were deported.

skice.

After visiting the archive, I acquired more than enough footage but I wasn't necessarily sure of how I wanted to shape the narrative. Me being me, instead of a storyboard I decided to create multiple draft edits. Soon enough I decided that the story was flowing better when it was in four parts: intro, the stories, the facts, the ending. As soon as I had decided that, I focused on arranging all the files into Premiere Pro bins as there were so many it got hard to keep up with them.

     /    

I did a rough edit before writing down the script for me to then record in Latvian and type in English. After multiple recordings, I got audio that I thought was okay - I was very self-conscious of my voice but I pushed that aside to keep moving forward.

     /    

Whilst editing, I decided to go off-script a little and record some more audio - this time I kept it Latvian-only, not translating it and directing it towards Latvians. I had had the idea to do this before so I thought I'd try it. It was also my way of fixing the problem of having a too voice-controlled film as at this point it was getting too overwhelming in terms of text.

home (hõm) māja; dzimtene

 title draft: homeland / dzimtene. 

 the time management: 

for the purpose of the film i'm visiting the national archives of latvia to acquire original footage from 1989 demonstrations and footage of soviet latvia, as well as possibly revisiting sites and shooting footage that would help hold up the narrative of the film. i am also readying a book that looks into the multiple deportations that took place in latvia and the history of the forest brothers. i have created a separate schedule for the production with approximate dates, however it might change as the style of this film allows it be quite flexible.

 the research updated: 

 the text style inspiration: 

 the scribbles: 

From the very start of this project, I had been wanting to use a 'distraction' - showing the audience one narrative, only to deem that useless by a new one (if that makes sense?). To do this I've decided to tell the narrative in two parts: one that would be presented as stories that aren't necessarily true, and second that would be presented with real facts.

As of now, I've decided to have the voiceover be in Latvian with subtitles in English, hence the use of text within the film. I am currently doubtful of this but I have had an idea to leave a 'secret' message in the audio for those who understand Latvian, or direct a paragraph to them only.

I hope to create a piece that is more of a PSA or a visual pamphlet on the topic rather than a fictional story. I could not find an archive release form before the actual visit so I edited the personal appearance form instead, adjusting it a little for the archive.

baltijas ceļš.

Initially my ideas were mostly based around text, possibly due to the fact I found inspiration in experimental films such as Bradley Manning Had Secrets by Adam Butcher and Blue by Derek Jarman. I was also amazed by Dan Mace's The Sound of Silence due to its unusually fast tempo during its opening sequence. Theme-wise I wanted to explore something metaphorical up until very recently.


My previous idea had been to see how something beautiful could hurt a person, but after a chat and some soul-searching I decided to pursue an idea I had had for years.

This idea was to create something rather personal and important to me. I realise not many people know the history of the Baltic States, those being Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, but I do find it fun to bring up our painful stories whenever someone compares them to Russia, or forgets that the Soviet regime was not voluntary. Anyhow, my plan was to make everyone more aware of just what my home has been through.


Originally I used this idea in a short I did for the theme Personal and Political where I created a short piece that used online footage of the people participating in The Baltic Way and created an audio piece that, whilst mostly muted, explained the current situation in Latvia from my point of view.

 The Baltic Way 

In 1940 the Baltic states were occupied by the Soviet Union which had previously agreed upon it with Nazi Germany. The agreement was entered into on 23 August 1939 in Moscow and was entirely secret. This document is called the Hitler–Stalin Pact or the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.  

 / 

At the end of the 1980s the effects of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact were still sharply present in the Baltic states. The occupation continued but the USSR denied the existence of the Pact and continuously asserted that the Baltic states had voluntarily joined the Soviet Union. On 23 August 1989, the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the inhabitants of the three Baltic states demanded public acknowledgement of the Pact’s secret protocols and the renewal of the independence of the Baltic states.  

 / 

At 19:00 on 23 August 1989 approximately two million inhabitants of the Baltic states joined hands forming a human chain from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius. The Baltic Way was organised by the national movements of the Baltic states: the Estonian Rahvarinne, the Latvian Popular front of Latvia and the Lithuanian Sajūdis. The participants gathered in the cities and villages where the campaign was to take place or drove to the less inhabited Baltic territories where the Baltic Way was to wind through. [1]

[1] The History of The Baltic Way (2014) At: http://www.thebalticway.eu/en/history/

(Accessed 09.03.2018)

with a heavy heart.

I am obsessed with the way this description of a human centrifuge has been written. I find it so easy to feel the words:

it’s hard to explain exactly how it feels inside a human centrifuge. you sit in a small egg-like pod about the size of a horse which hangs off a 50 foot steel horizontal frame. It looks like something out of a bond villain’s lair. it’s claustrophobic and uncomfortable and also incredibly hot.

slowly the whole thing starts to rotate like a helicopter blade. Faster and faster until every part of you becomes crushed under the extreme gravity. its like being slowly sat on by an elephant, or like your whole body being punched in slow motion. you have to flex every muscle and use every ounce of strength you have to keep going. breathing requires serious effort. movement becomes incredibly strained and almost painful. everything that once weighed 5 kilograms now weighs 50. its difficult even to keep your eyes open. it hurts in places you really didn’t know existed. veins and capillaries burst under the pressure and bruising begins. its a rapid physical overdrive.

the blood rushes from your brain making it impossible to think rationally or focus. your eyes are also drained and you get tunnel vision…only able to see small circles of the world directly in front of you and your sight goes completely greyscale…no more colour. your balance and spatial awareness goes and the world begins to spin like you’ve had way too much to drink. but the most striking thing is the way that the machine pulls on your heart. you can actually feel it struggling to beat and changing shape…flattening inside of your chest. Its similar to that horrible sinking, tugging heartache that comes only with complete and overwhelming sadness. and then you pass out.

we ran the centrifuge 18 times while i tried to sing along to a song which i find difficult to listen to at the best of times.

This is my current inspiration. At the start of this project I really wanted to explore lightness, softness, bliss and the unconscious but I soon realised that it was just something too much in my comfort zone. My visual poems always tend to lean towards the common sense of beauty. However, reading this I realised that the being human is also about a sense of sickness, a pain in fact inflicted by something beautiful.

us and [sr].

< when i was twelve
i had to choose between german and russian
my dad told me to do russian because then he could help me with the homework

i was confused as to why he knew the language so well
but when he was a child, russian was our country's language

see, my sister was born in 1990,

a year after the baltic chain of freedom

but a year before the fall of ussr.

she was born in soviet union

and i was born in latvia,

only a seven year difference.

i was born in a free country

childishly i was unaware

that nothing in life is as easy as it seems, and that when i grow up
hearing latvian on a street would become almost unusual.

most of my friends fell in love with travelling,

they moved, and so did i,

and what's left now is the generation who fought for our freedom

left to watch it disappear. >

m.

As the title suggests, I find it very hard to explain what I did in this little video. I had a whole vision of a strange video I wanted to shoot but I've now decided to keep it for later as last week didn't really go as well as I hoped it would. Nevertheless, I filmed some shots and went crazy on Premiere Pro. This includes using warp and twirl distortions, color keying colours that really should've remained untouched, using multiple layers, timelapse and RGB curves on top of two still images and five shots of clouds, Jack under a huge blanket and a close-up of a guitar amp.

A week and a half ago I also decided to go a bit crazy with the live music footage we recorded. Although it started as me just playing with editing tools, I soon realised that I actually quite liked the low, grainy quality of bad color keying and multiple, colourful layers. I might come back to that again.

The video beneath is one I did a very long time ago for a poem that I wrote, however the shots following the one minute fourty four second mark are some of my favourites as they are more abstract and unusual than the rest of the milk/honey/ink visuals. I like textures, both of the subject filmed and the actual digital outcome after editing, so I might bring that into some of the other experimental shorts to follow.

blues

A timelapse of an empty day going by.
(this is edit number two. edit one is here)

I don't think this was a successful attempt at working with time, mostly because my mind went blank and the only idea within it was a timelapse. I like timelapses because of the fluid way the image changes, and the fact that when you start, you don't know what you're going to end up with.

The timelapse in this video is reversed and consists of 45 minutes of footage sped up by 5000 percent. It's also reversed, and as my camera recorded it into four different files, I slowed each file down by 4 frames using Premiere Pro's 'Posterize Time' to interrupt this flow of time that the smooth timelapse created. The very start of this video is a very strange scene I happened to wander upon with multiple large lights turning on and off constantly for about ten minutes, which I thought was quite hypnotising.

The audio was a short journey between Charing Cross and Embankment on the underground, lasting fourty seven seconds (recorded on a Zoom and with a hallway reverb)

[..] but the most striking thing is the way that the machine pulls on your heart. you can actually feel it struggling to beat and changing shape…flattening inside of your chest. Its similar to that horrible sinking, tugging heartache that comes only with complete and overwhelming sadness. and then you pass out.

This is one of the heaviest videos I've seen in a while and it's not necessarily what it looks like - it's where it takes place and what it symbolises. Filmed inside a human centrifuge, they ran it eighteen times to get the lead singer to perform the whole of the song. His facial expressions change and the sweat on his forehead tells about the intensity of the experience. It is so strange to watch that I still haven't figured out exactly how it was recorded and edited. I just thought this was a fascinating video to do with time, movement and sense of heaviness.

In recent mainstream films one of my favourite uses of time was actually in Dunkirk. They used three different timelines, counting down to the main event: a week, a day, an hour and they took place in three different areas: air, sea and land.

These locations and times created a sort of a triptych - three unlinked pathways that all lead up to the big revelation. I found it amazing how the film changed between the times, relying on the spectator to keep up with what storyline they were following at that particular time. Needless to say, it was also the beautiful camerawork from Nolan and van Hoytema that played with the feeling of time, silence and chaos.