duckrabbit - we produce photofilms » Audio Slideshow

‘I thought that I was in the belly of the beast’

duckrabbit — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:25:45 +0000

This is a powerful photofilm by Eric Johnson. Some strong photographs and perfectly recorded audio, proving once more that a simple approach is often best.

‘The 30th Street Men´s Shelter, otherwise known as Bellevue, is New York City’s largest homeless shelter. A combination of mentally ill, parolees, substance abusers and people simply down on their luck are all housed together in this shelter.’

I was a bit bothered by the music being the same throughout, but listen right through to the end, because there is a magical moment when it all shifts.

There’s also a good lesson in how to record audio here. Listen how clear Carl Foye’s voice is. There is so much history in that voice, history that you just can’t pick up on unless the microphone is very close.

Thanks to @bobsacha for pointing the way on twitter.

UPDATE:

Eric has left the following comment:

‘I was first attracted to the project because of the building itself. The homeless shelter is located in what used to be a psychiatric hospital. Its very interesting visually but what became clear after checking myself in and staying there a few nights is that its all about the people and survival. I always shoot the same, dictated by light, but in this case the photographs were really my reaction to staying there a few nights… David commented “striving to the light” and he is totally right. I think most photographers shoot how they feel in the situation.
Anyway, thanks for looking at the piece.’

THANK YOU ERIC … duckrabbit will be watching out for your work.

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‘Obsession, commitment, love’

duckrabbit — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:49:03 +0000

‘Obsession, commitment, love‘, that’s how Anna Carter describes her relationship with Carter’s Steam Fair, the largest original touring vintage fairground anywhere in the world.

And that’s exactly what’s on show at a new duckrabbit exhibition at Reading Museum. Our photofilm ‘Fairground Attraction’, is being projected alongside fifty of Rabbit’s wonderful photos that capture the magic of Carter’s Steam Fair.

If you’re anywhere near Reading please do drop into the museum (see poster at the bottom of the page) and let us know what you think. And if, like the majority of people, you are nowhere near Reading, take three minutes out of your day to watch our photofilm Fairground Attraction below (or embed it to your facebook page or blog from here):

(click on the image below to bring up the photofilm, and click again to play)

duckrabbit would like to thank Damien Drohan for assisting with the audio editing.

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Alzheimer’s, in fresh light

duckrabbit — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 11:29:05 +0000

It’s one of people’s worst fears. To either lose your mind or watch the mind of someone you love slowly disappear. Phillip Toledano explored this photographically in his thought provoking website and book Days With My Father. The work is amongst the best you’ll find on the web.

Cathy Greenblat is another photographer who has been exploring age, though from a more detached perspective than Toledano. Greenblat challenges the notion that people with Alzheimer’s aren’t really, well, people anymore. That’s challenging, especially for those of us who have stopped going to see people we love, because we can’t deal with the pain of feeling that we are unable to reach them anymore.

Cathy was one of the photographers at duckrabbit and Rhubarb’s Photography Still Moving Seminar in London last month. I threw together this EYECUE to show how easy it is to make a short promo of your work.

The interview was ten minutes, I edited it in another thirty five minutes and pulled the whole thing together in IMOVIE in an hour or so. In fact I spent more time trying to get the quality of the compressed video right than I did producing the piece!

The only person I’ve showed this EYECUE to cried. Not because it is particularly emotional or well produced, but because the photos and subject tapped into her own experience of losing someone.

Often, though by no means always, the photography we celebrate, especially in terms of photojournalism, leaves so little to the imagination. The journey begins and ends with the photograph and photographer. The point is to make a big, bold statement. The same goes for photofilms.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty bored with statement, it smacks of posturing and rhetoric; give me a beer and a conversation any day.

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Kicking Off – my kind of awesome

duckrabbit — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:26:00 +0000

One of the great things of being an occasional teacher on LCC’s photojournalism masters is the talented students you get to meet. Much of the work is very inspiring.

This ninety second (that’s all they were allowed) photofilm or Eyecue, by Huiying Hu is one of my favorites and is perfectly timed for the world cup. It also shows that a good story is never far away.

Please do watch and take the time to comment. It means a lot to people when you make the effort to give something back. Really.

(If you too would like to learn how to start making photofilms join us for a day workshop in London on the 19th of June, at ‘Photography Still Moving’)

Kicking Off from Huiying Hu on Vimeo.

In the course of shooting for my assignments during the previous term, I literally stumbled upon a team of young football players training in a park near my house. That was the beginning of a delightful relationship.

Over the last few months, I showed up almost every Saturdays, and documented their training sessions. Even after my assignments were fulfilled, I kept going back, sometimes returning with good photographs, sometimes none at all.

The team is mostly made up of second-generation immigrants. Despite their cultural differences, the universal appeal of football proves incredible in uniting this group of children. Governed by the same rules on the field, the boys learn about sportsmanship, fair play and discipline from the coach and also each other.

As a football player myself, I am familiar with the emotions- anticipation, exhilaration, passion to name a few, related to the game. However, I am unaccustomed to seeing such seriousness from children at tender ages of four to ten. At times the boys seem to mimic the reactions of adult football players, while other times they break down and cry like boys their age.

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Something Beautiful (again), audio slideshow

duckrabbit — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 10:32:47 +0000

A couple of days ago David put up a post about ‘Something Beautiful’, a very personal photofilm by Ore Huiying. At the time I didn’t realize that Ore is one of the students I’ve been teaching at LCC (its a large group). I certainly know her now after she beat me up for not being critical enough of the students work.

The version of ‘Something Beautiful’ that we put up was really small. Here is a much bigger one. Ore’s statement is also a little subtle for thickos like me. The bottom line, this is about love and loss. Letting go of Tasos. It’s about being a stranger in a strange land. Remembering someone who touched your life and learning to let go, or having to let go.

All the pictures are taken from the top deck of a London bus. And really, you need to listen out for Ore’s voice at the end. It wasn’t until I heard her that I felt genuinely moved.

(If you’re interested in producing photofilms join duckrabbit for the Photography Still Moving workshop in London on the 19th)

Something beautiful from Huiying Hu on Vimeo.

Huiying Ore – Something Beautiful:

“I’ve always love bus rides, and appreciate it even more as a newcomer to London.
As the city flipped past me like pages from a book, I slowly lose awareness of my
immediate surroundings and slipped into a dreamlike state. And my mind embarked
on another journey of its own, flowing constantly on a continuum between the
remembered past and the imagined future.

My objective to capture images that are in motion and present them as stills is
akin to that of my desire to halt my chaotic memories, and capture their unsteady
essence. As a passenger in the bus of thought, my imagination runs ahead of the
contemplation of passing events, and travels in the direction of the yet unseen
and unthought.

The result is a cathartic release of emotions, and a realization that the end of
something beautiful is to be treasured, and not to be mourned. ”

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Jonny Be Good

duckrabbit — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:12:51 +0000

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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In Silence

duckrabbit — Wed, 19 May 2010 10:32:33 +0000

“What happened to us should not happen to anyone.”

Photographer Susan Meiselas and reporter Dumeetha Luthra traveled to India for Human Rights Watch to retrace the steps of one woman who died after giving birth to a son.

Powerful and respectful work.

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Why you should give yourself a project

Adam Westbrook — Sun, 16 May 2010 16:03:05 +0000

One of the hardest things about working for yourself as a journalist or producer is keeping in the habit of finding, researching and producing stories.

At first, you’re not as exposed to them as much as you would be in a newsroom. Inspiration is hard to come by. Good contacts even harder.

It’s easy this way to find your creativity and your productivity stalling. It happened to me when I started. You get tied down with short-term gigs which bring in the money, but which aren’t what you went freelance to do.

Here’s my solution: get a project.

Design some kind of project which gets you producing some form of content at least once a week. It could be a project to document the residents of a unique town or of an estate about to be torn down; it could be to get stories from local elderly people and put them into multimedia; it could be to put in a Freedom of Information Request once a week and run a blog posting the results.

You don’t need to get it commissioned first, or even someone to pitch it to. You don’t need to know it’ll make you any money. Just go out and do it.

If anything it’ll get you out of the house. But more importantly it’ll get you practicing your storytelling, get you in front of people who may have story ideas, and give you content for your portfolio. You can share it too and get feedback with sites like Finding the Frame, and events like Foto8′s monthly Slideslam Carousel.

Stuck for ideas?

The video sharing website Vimeo runs a Weekend Project for its users to contribute to, err, over the weekend.

This weekend they want stories:

Find or create an audio recording of an interview that you’ve made with a friend, family, or anyone with an interesting story. Take that audio and illustrate it whether through animation, abstract imagery, or shoot footage you think best complements and helps show the audio you’ve found or recently recorded.

Deadline’s Tuesday, and you get a Vimeo Plus account if you win.

If you’ve got a quiet few days ahead, my advice is take part.

ADAM WESTBROOK

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Postcards from Blackpool (Valentina Quintano)

duckrabbit — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:30:00 +0000

I was once spent a night in Blackpool when I was making a programme for the BBC about the fate of race horses when they can no longer win races. The programme was almost as depressing as Blackpool, but not quite.

I remember standing in one of the arcarde’s watching people pour their money away, seemingly in a trance. No soul, no happiness to be found anywhere.

Don’t get me wrong I’m sure lots of people go to Blackpool and have a great time and its certainly an eye opener if you haven’t been exposed to the lowest common denominator of British culture. I’ve actually been thinking about running a poetry/photography workshop there.

Here’s a really bang on series of postcards from Blackpool by Valentina Quintano. She’s one of the talented students on the photojournalism masters at LCC (she just needs to get her head round audio). Last time I taught her she sat at the back of the class yawning. Now I know why.

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Congratulations to duckrabbit and LCC student Daniel Cuthbert

duckrabbit — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:31:13 +0000

Who managed to get one of his stories featured on the front cover of the BBC website.

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