What were the starting points with your research and work?
I was working on an idea for a series of cinema films when I was approached to make this film. I was drawn to the Futurist cinema in Scarborough as it is a 2500 seat cinema with a rich history that is threatened with closure, a pre-digital relic that I felt needed to be recorded before it is potentially erased from memory. The idea for this series of films was to create a single 360 degree shot in each cinema where a 35mm feature film is being projected without an audience. Each film would be shot using only the light from the projection with long exposures on single frames abstracting the projection to light and colour, condensing the film to just a few minutes. The soundtrack for each public spaces under-pined the idea that by taking people out of the frame and leaving only the environment it gives a deeper insight into human nature as well as a keener awareness of that environment. Traces of human presence are visible in the architect, landscape and arrangement of objects left behind.
This film is a condensed experience of film viewing in a cinema where the sound becomes a cacophony of past projections and the aural experience is closer to that of the projectionist than the audience.
Describe the process in creating your work so far?
Shooting on single frames to create a seamless animated single shot lasting 4 minutes took a lot of testing so I spent time in my local cinema doing this before the final shoot which paid off but it still took 3 days to get the final shot for the film.
All the sound was recorded in the projection booth of the cinema at the time of shooting to get the most authentic direct sound I could to work with to put together the soundtrack.
This film relates strongly to ideas and concerns in my previous films. It comes out of an interest in the relationship between film and photography, the still and moving image and is similar to my other work in the use of light to animate and environment, to make a portrait of a place.
To what degree has your (physical) relationship with the site influenced in the project’s direction?
It was in interesting process, sitting in an empty cinema for 3 days attempting to create the shot that you see in the film. There is something magical about being alone in a 2500 seat cinema watching a film but also knowing that this particular cinema, like many others may not exist for much longer, it felt like an important way to mark the passing of this place, the end of an era of 35mm film projection.
How might you envisage the audience engaging with or experience the work?
I hope the audience will be able to see this work in the cinema where it was made, as well as other cinemas, where it will become a reflective experience, one where the audience is made very aware of where they are sitting and viewing the film, highlighting their physical relationship to it.
I am continuing the series while I am artist in residence at FACT, Liverpool over the summer.
