A few days ago I had the pleasure of watching back in class the work of some of my students on the Masters in Photojournalism at the London College of Communication. Both myself and John Easterby (who chaired the session) were blown away by the quality of some of the work by students who had never attempted multimedia before. I’m going to be sharing the best of it on the duckrabbit blog.
All the pieces were 90 seconds long. This is what David has termed an ‘EYECUE’. What is that? Well it’s a kind of multimedia haiku.
All good documentary makers know that they mustn’t try and tell the whole story because you can’t, and even if you could it would be dead boring. The art is knowing what to leave out.
Jonny Cochrane has got the right idea. He has a wonderful eye for a shot. Don’t try and follow this EYECUE (which apparently he banged off in a night) Just let it roll over you.
‘Michael Mwenso is a musician and historian. He is organiser and compere of ‘The late late sessions’ at Ronnie Scotts jazz club in Soho.
I have considered Michael for many years as one of the biggest and most charismatic characters I know and so thought he would be a perfect subject to explore for my first EYECUE.
In this piece he talks about one of his earliest life-changing encounters, aged only 11, with his hero and mentor James brown.’ Jonny Cochrane
Mwenso – by Jonny Cochrane from Jonny Cochrane on Vimeo.
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Fantastic.
A subjective point – but those low light ‘gig’ shots are screaming for film – for me the digital noise ruins the feel of the piece.
Regards,
Matt
Its a good point Matt. For me it doesn’t detract but I’d be interested to hear what other people think?
Jonny?
That was fun. I think I understood some of it
i agree that film will always look a million times better, especially for grainy black and white stuff, but its just not always possible to be using it. personally, i don’t think the noise ruins the feel in this piece, but hey, each to their own.
Jonny
Jonny, you are right, when I read it back ‘ruin’ is in fact too harsh a word.
Sorry.
On the first frame where the noise is heavy it jumped out at me and didn’t allow me to view and enjoy the photo ultimately distracting me from the whole piece – if that makes sense?
What I love about this blog though, is the preview I get of the work been produced – my head is a swirl of inspiration from this site alone.
…and one day I may just make enough money to justify the time spent on powerful pieces like yours and many others on here.
Kind regards,
Matt