Filmmaking
Inception
I had shared a piece of writing I had done in first year about connection that was unfinished but seemed very relevant to the session back in the second week as a company.
Alicia picked up on, and seemed to really find interesting, the part about when a hold becomes crush - where the lines start to blur between loving touches to something more controlling which gave me the seed for the first film I wanted to shoot.
-
There is a strange energy, a weird vibe that sends my stomach twisting and turning, contorting and distorting, like a bog standard Britain’s Got Talent contestant.
But then he holds my hand.
And I remember what it’s like to be loved,
And to not be alone.
And I’m still terrified and scared and I think I could very possibly vomit and/or shit myself right here, right now but now I am something else on top of all that.
I am brave.
None of the fear leaves but it is numbed. It fades a little, becomes blurrier and slightly harder to see like when I forgo my glasses for too long and the astigmatism really forces me to squint to see.
But he’s holding my hand. His hand warm, big – slightly sweaty.
I let it go, wipe my hand on my trousers because, scared as I am, it is a little gross.
I hold his hand.
He gives my hand a squeeze. I do the same back.
He does it again, harder and longer as if he’s trying to break every individual bone in my hand because he is after all, a boy and therefore, playful, immature and a dick.
I contort and twist in pain and he relents possibly because he’s showing me mercy – more likely because I’ve threatened to hit him in the bollocks.
He continues holding my hand but with a reasonable grip. He looks at me, says nothing and yet says everything.
That somewhat rare yet all too common fondness is in his eyes that makes me feel like we’re alone regardless of whether that’s true or not. The look that makes my heart skip a beat or two. There’s a warm glimmer in his eyes that makes my heart melt.
I’ve always found those sayings to be corny but it’s in moments like this where I honestly couldn’t think of a more accurate way of describing it all.
So he holding my hand, eyes glimmering warmly, heart melting, skipping and just malfunctioning in general and —
He smiles, reserved.
There’s a natural progression at this point. This is, after 9 months, a very well rehearsed routine. His mind is processing the motions, I can see it in his eyes straight through to where the cogs turn. He leans in and we kiss.
It is nowhere near as passionate as every Hollywood romantic flick but it is nothing short of perfect.
It doesn’t last more than a few seconds but in those seconds I can hear every declaration of love he’s ever not said. Every “I love you” he’s not spoken first.
But he means it. With all his heart.
He is a man and therefore vulnerable. He is human therefore has not only a desire but a need for love; for affection.
He cannot, dares not, voice it for an unfathomable reason, but it doesn’t worry me because in those few seconds he said it all. He does not say it. So stood in the dark alley outside, illuminated only by the faint, purple-y glow of the arcade, I do.
I love you.
“I love you too.”
Mood Board
The images below formed inspiration to the shots I wanted to take - the extreme colour contrast, the ghostly effect of the milk water.
Concept
^ my shots for Bile
I already had a list of general events that were to happen in this film so then worked on a list of shots I wanted (which was more in depth). Admittedly, my drawing skills are quite poor so I had to accompany the storyboard sketches with a lot more text to try and explain what my sketches were of.
Pretty much along side it, I started writing the text that would be accompanying the film (being subtitled on top as it will be silent whilst it’s on stage). There wasn’t a very clear process for this - I just had phrases and sentances pop into my head inspired by the images I drew which went on to inspire more text in like a feedback loop.
“BILE” was very much a dark look into relationships and co-dependency and was inspired in part by my fractious relationship to my dad. It’s told by the POV of the victim in the situation and I took the approach of having the victim perfectly aware of their abuse and the toxicity of their situation. Admittedly, this may have been a risky approach given there was a point in time where Kevin saw our piece as being too demure as this wouldn’t add to the glimmers of hope but by the time we got to our final piece, with the undercutting of the clarinet to provide some levity along with the chase scenes, and the lovely moments like Jess first holding Maxx’s hand, the exploration of such dark aspects of connection was less of a drag on the performance and instead added more dimension on the varied and complex types of connection we have with people.
For the second film (“black long liquorice laces”), I decided I wanted to incorporate abstract imagery into it which in part I decided could be animation provided by Becca. I originally was just going to film us building the set and then speed it up but I felt our human presence (especially as this will be shown on stage during the play) would be quite jarring and removes the mystique if we reveal to the audience during the play it’s effectively manmade. Instead, I settled on making it using stop motion, a skill Becca has worked on for quite some time. This would be accompanied by the text Abi had written questioning the origins of the surroundings. I later decided it would also be good to include videos of hands - it was something that was brought up a lot in the original making of this piece and I felt would match up very nicely with the action on stage and reinforced the importance of the act of taping up hands. I also thought it could be quite nice as occasionally the film on the CRTs would sync up with action on stage, mirroring them.
Filming and Editing
I ran into a few obstacles when it came to filming, one big one being that the model I orignally was going to use for BILE dropped out suddenly leaving me without anyone. This made things a bit difficult I would find it difficult to shoot myself. It was a blessing in disguise though because I was able to be more out there with the things I wanted to do - the depiction of the strangling with wires, the ghostly bathing in milk. Regardless though, this did delay my ability to shoot which meant I lost out on editing time over the Easter hols as I was very eager to film at my university house - the green bathroom and angel tiles being very unique and providing a lovely contrast to myself.
For these films I used:
Canon XA20 Professional Camcorder
JVC GR-FX12E VHS Camcorder
Becca’s iPhone
There was a big learning curve with using these bits of equipment and these programmes as I’d normally used either my VHS camcorder or a DSLR which has less intricate settings for video shooting. On top of that I normally used Final Cut Pro to edit but after doing some research on Reddit about best programmes to use, decided to give Premier Pro a try.
We had done a workshop on it with Wiktoria Szulc from the School of Digital Arts earlier on in the year and I had enrolled onto a few Adobe courses (Photoshop, Premier Pro and After Effects) with the aim of getting an Adobe Certified Professional qualification so I decided to use this as an opportunity to push myself to learn a new skill.
The Canon camcorder simply recorded onto an SD card and I just dragged and dropped the videos into my harddrive before importing them into a new bin in Premier Pro but for the JVC I had to use a digitiser to connect it to my computer and record the camcorder playing back the tape in Quicktime Player which is a much longer process as there’s no ability to skip around or just have clips (unless you record it as clips - a much longer process). It also makes the process of filming much more precious - whilst with an SD card, the only limitation is how much storage you have (and I had bought a 128GB card a while back so there wasn’t much limit), whereas with my JVC I was limited to however much tape I had. I was pretty selective with what I recorded with that to avoid running out of tape before I could capture something I wanted.
The Final Product
BILE (2022)
directed and edited by Valentina Vettore (@valshauntedigaccount)
Text by Valentina Vettore
Camera Operators: Josh Ashton, Valentina Vettore, Alicia Fretter
Hands: Josh Ashton, Rebecca Horswill, Jessica Edwards, Chris Richards, Jake Rayner Blair
Based in part from analogous lived experience, BILE explores abusive dynamics and the toxic dependency sometimes born from it. The film delves into the complex nature of victimhood - the emotional drain of being aware of your mistreatment, the desire to be free and safe from said abuse but still yearning for the architect of it - unable to distinguish between the slap and the stroke, the caress of the neck and the strangling of it.
black long liquorice laces (2022)
directed and edited by Valentina Vettore
animation by Becca Horswill
text by Abi Sallery
Hands: Maxx Orrell, Jessica Edwards, Lorna Scott
Combining stop motion with video of organic moments in the rehearsal process captured on VHS, with text from Abi written at the beginning of this 10 week process, “black long liquorice laces” seeks to enquire into the creation of this world filled with wires and gaffer tape. Where did they go? Where did they go? Where did the wires come from?