Residue

Arriving home this afternoon, I noticed this dead piece of chewed up apple on the concrete in the front yard.
The sun was at just the right angle to reveal/expose a multitude of snail and slug trails to and from the apple.

It looked so wonderful, i just had to photograph it. I like to think that there was this frenzied feast taking part during the night and that the snail and slug trails are the only evidence of that event.

Like blood splatters left at a murder scene, the trails hint at the brutality of the attack on that poor defenceless piece of apple. Poor little apple.

'Liquidambar' ... a Homage to Stan Brakhage

In 2003 after hearing the news that the godfather of experimental cinema, Stan Brakhage had died, i was inspired to pay homage in film form and thus made a short film called 'Liquidambar'.

In many ways it is my companion piece to Stan's film 'Mothlight' and was made using similar production methods of sicking pieces of leaves, petals, dead insects, etc directly onto strips of clear 16mm film and then optically reprinting them.

The end result when viewed is fleeting 'impressions' that bombard the eyes, leaving a slight buildup of afterimages on the retina, creating a montage effect.


I also liked the idea of long dead insects being preserved in ambar for thousands, if not millions of years in the solidified sap of ancient trees.
My film title of 'Liquidambar'...makes reference to this preservation but the remnants of the dead being preserved as images within the 16mm film emulsion instead.






The top image shows some of the original clear 16mm film srips with all the bits and pieces i stuck on them. The other two images are close ups of the 16mm film frames.

Holy Crap

There is a whole other world of religious memorabilia surrounding Holy cards. Apparently, some people collect them in a similar way that kids would collect footy cards etc.
There are literally thousands of different Holy cards and the variety seems endless.
Some cards have amazingly beautiful artwork and others seem totally kitsch.

So, (inspired by a friends lovely and poignant Holy card re-workings) i bought some old cards on ebay and added my own rather silly touches.

And since i don't have Photshop, i had to resort to good old fashioned glue and scissors.... But I kinda like the comic book aesthetic it adds to the images.
(Click on the cards for a bigger image)....

Jesus toast

I did a google search for 'Jesus toast' and found this great image of Jesus appearing on a piece of toast. It's obvoiusly fake...but way cool.

Little worlds in a box

As a child i use to love making stuff.


My dad was an architect and he would sometimes have to make scale models of the buildings he designed.

I would also make models of buildings but i was never
really allowed to use his expensive and professional 'architect model materials' and thus my models were made out of
cardboard and looked quite crappy......anyway....

about 7 years ago i rediscovered my desire to make 'stuff' and embarked on a series of miniature dioramas.




I used scale model figures that are usually confined to model railway sets and i built and boxed my own little worlds.





I liked that i could rearranged and re-contextualise the figures and make them 'behave' in ways that they wouldn't normally be allowed to do if they were stuck on a typical model railway setting...... See photos......especially the close up stuff...

Some of the dioramas are like a 'snap-shot' of action...a frozen moment...before an accident unfolds.

There is often an element of voyeurism and exhibitionism to the
narratives within the dioramas

I have a few more dioramas planned and hope to have exhibition somewhere, sometime in 2007.

'A room with askew'

'A room with askew' was my 10th film, but only my second effort at stop-motion animation.
I knew i wanted to explore something quite dark, surreal and visceral....In constucting the set and main figures i used a variety of organic 'body parts', eg animal skulls, sharks teeth, bones, shells, feathers etc. I also wanted to animate (or rather re-animate, like Dr. Frankenstein did) dead flesh, hence the use of
whole fish and chunks of raw disembodied meat/flesh.

In many ways animation is all about breathing life/spirit into the lifeless...a kind of transitory death defying process...but ultimately and forever an illusion.

I was also interested in exploring references to early photography and its development/evolution into cinema, hence the use of the Eadweard Muybridge 'motion study' photographic sequences as 'moving' pictures framed on the walls of the set.


'A room with askew' 5:20 mins. 16mm. 2006.. all production credits by gregory godhard.

Lovesong camera/light/panel set up (part 2)

Here's another camera/light/panel set-up image to show the technique i'm using in making this film. It's all very low tech but it works well.

'Lovesong' camera set up ...

Here are some more images from Lovesong and the camera, lighting and 'panel' set up.

Hopefully this may give some insights into the film making process.

Lovesong

I'm progressing well on my new film called Lovesong. This is my 12th short film overall and my 3rd film using a technique i have been exploring whereby i make lots of small glass panels and then paint them with translucent glass paints.

The 65 panels for Lovesong are approximately 10cm X 7cm. These panels are back-lit and filmed frame by frame on my Bolex RX5 16mm movie camera.

I use a variety of lenses and macro extension tubes to get up really close to the glass panel so i can capture all the beautiful paint swirls.

They look a bit like cosmic images from the Hubble telescope.

I reposition or change the panels every few frames.... I also incorporate double exposures, overlapping fades and tiny lens zooms to alter the pacing and effects. The films' end result when viewed is a whirlwind of colours flashing past or towards the viewer.