Martin Scorsese I'm not!

'I shall be gone awhile' Captain Oates said to Scott as he left the tent, never to be seen again.  And so off I wandered into the distance, around 300 metres, and hit the crowds.  One could be forgiven if I chose to take that particular course of action, given that I find crowds as exciting as a bad case of the pox.  The fact you know what lies ahead, and that what you're going to do, in this case get some film footage, means the level of ignorance is zilch.

I am talking of the Christmas market, and on the opening day nothing could be worse than milling with the throngs of sweaty humanity in all its glorious anonymous forms.  The reason for my steps into the unknowingly known, is to film the event and eventually make a short film, that I can upload to this blog; if one has to suffer for one's art, I see no reason why others shouldn't as well.  Endeavoring on this particular quest has been a bit of an eye-opener, and looking at the daily rushes I'm both delighted and equally horrified with my efforts.  Delighted that I managed to actually film some shots that are half decent, horrified that I appear to be suffering from utter drunkenness at times.  I do take my hat off to any director of photography, and any films I watch in the future will be more favourably looked upon.

Of course, filming crowd scenes with a cast of an unsuspecting thousands of unpaid extras leads to some luvvies getting in the way, at the most inopportune moments.  But at other times, pure farce ensues such as when a delightful female butt cleavage wanders into shot, gratuitous sex scene, or a young child upon a carousel horse thinking the wooden rendition will go much faster if he rides it with a zealous intensity.  Then there's the two horses pulling the stagecoach, which wends its winding way through the old city, leaving behind fresh evidence of not being very happy with forever going round in circles; the intelligence of horses is largely underrated in my book.  The silly season continued with the refuse lorry stopping outside the bank; appropriate I thought considering the amount of crap the financial sector has dumped on us for the past year or so.  I did the unforgivable and with the microphone recording the scenes, I can be heard to say 'bugger off'.  I'm a little surprised that the microphone didn't pick up the occasional expletive I muttered, but then I must have been in my Marlon Brando voice mode, and so wasn't picked up.

Getting back to the filming, I'm a little surprised that I'll have to go back and do more filming, which gives me further insight into why so much material ends up on the cutting floor, edited out, never to be used in the final polished version.  I filmed some two hours worth of material, and still there's not enough for a 15 minute film.  But more importantly I managed to learn a lot in such a short space of time and I feel more confident about tightening up the shots I take.  The other thing is that I filmed in the dark, and the camera didn't like it; mind you I don't think I would appreciate it all that much if I had a bright light shining intensely into my eyes.

Will I ever become a Scorsese, Lean or Fellini?  No, but then I wouldn't want to be, although I'm fairly certain they weren't without their own trials and tribulations when they started out on their magnificent careers.  If I manage to put something together that's half decent I'll be happy.  All in all I'm fairly sure Hollywood's not waiting for me to knock on its door, if it is, it has a long wait.

Here I must end, I can hear the shower calling me.  I'm off to a concert where I'll be watching Handel's 'Messiah' being performed, and if nothing else it'll be a pleasant few hours to pass the time away.