Work and More Work

January 26, 2011 / copernicusfilms / Leave a comment

Worked late into the evening and night on the film“Stanislavsky and Russian Theatre” I’ve been trying to get the first section right. If I can do this then most of the film will follow. Concentrating on the music sound track and the opening chords to the film which are both visual and musical and give a feeling of the atmosphere of Moscow at night.

Metro very quiet – a definite absence of the usual bustle and crowds which is its main feature these days. Seems like many people avoiding travelling after the recent events, tense and subdued.

Today bright and sunny but very cold. I noticed last night on my way home that the sky was clear and the air super crisp which denoted fine weather for the following day. Its my favourite time of the year in Moscow, in winter that is.

Will work more today on the film. Also working on background material for the film which will widen out the scope of the subject and be useful additional information to go with the film. This is my intention. That is to offer a range of supporting material in association with the film – the full interviews, articles, sites where information about Stanislavsky and Russian theatre in general. This will be in conjunction with The Stanislavsky Centre in London at the Rose Bruford College of Performance and Actingand the London Theatre Blog. In this way the squidoo site is very useful with its lenses and stuff which I am getting to know how to use. It offers an additional hub to theCopernicus Films web site and at the same time links with the web and other social media platforms. I like the way its is set up. At first I wasn’t sure about it but recent improvements have made it a useful instrument in collating and disseminating information about the work. I like the way it breaks down modules into specific subjects and groups them together.

Moscow in Mist

January 25, 2011 / copernicusfilms / Leave a comment

Moscow has been covered in a mantle of mist for the last few days. Yesterday I walked from my apartment down to he embankment of the Moscow river, past the Ukraine Hotel (Now the Raddisson), and the White House on up towards the curved bridge which carries the metro across the river like some fairground attraction every two minutes. I turned back to look at the new Moscow City complex, the peaks of the tallest buildings shrouded in a thick mist like something from a Chinese monochrome mountain landscape painting. Cars swished by in the slush left by the melting snow and as a result of the mild weather conditions. As I was near to the Museum of the East I called into a friend who works there and we talked for an hour or so, both glad that the long holiday is finally over and we can get back to work. I came home later grateful to get back into my work on a film about Stanislavsky – “Stanislavsky and Russian Theatre“.

3D Visions at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography

January 17, 2011 / copernicusfilms / Leave a comment

An exhibition, 3D Visions, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography is an exploration of the practice of giving flat images the illusion of depth. 3D is the new by word in film making and this article casts a new light on this phenomena. I read an article about the exhibition which prompted some new thoughts on the subject which hadn’t occurred to me before. 3D could become a way of exploring new visual and compositional possibilities in film making. The following quote from the curator of the museum, Junya Yamamine is particularly apt and revealing in this context. “that filmmakers are striving to make 3D an expression of a “world view” rather than just stringing together cheap visual thrills”. The next step, he says, is for creators literate in the technology to develop new forms of expression. As a film maker this is one of the first sensible things I have heard out about how to use and develop this format. Rather than being afraid of this technology film makers ought to learn how to use it to extend their expressive possibilities whether it is in film, animation or trans-media projects. The expression “world view” in relation to 3D is especially intriguing and I would have liked Junya Yamamine to have enlarged on what he had in mind by such an expression. For my own part I am interested in the philosophical possibilities of film purely as a medium of expression, that is the ability of film to reveal or disclose a truth not necessarily in a narrative form but as a conceptual entity. Instead of trying to fit 3D into our pre conceived ideas of story telling maybe we should give it free rein to reveal its own interior power. This exhibition seems to be an attempt to do this albeit in the realm of photography.

You can read the full article here:

http://arts-extra.ft.com/articles/visual/5a37a162-2004-11e0-a6fb-00144feab49a

St Petersburg Origins

January 15, 2011 / copernicusfilms / Leave a comment

In the early 1990s Russia changed its political system radically and the Soviet system of government was replaced in favour of a new political path with aspirations to democratize its institutions along western lines and economic models of capitalism. A lot has happened since that time. I mention it here as I was in Russia at that time for nearly four months, in St Petersburg in fact, working on a film for the BBC. My experience during that time had a huge bearing on what I am doing at the moment which is making films and how I am doing it.

While in St Petersburg in 1993 I was introduced to an English guy called Adam Alexander or maybe Alexander Adams I cant quite remember.He had set up as a producer come distributor in the city. He had bought a largish apartment and I was invited around to meet him on one of my few days off during the production. Adam was a tall blond guy with a naive welcoming smile and manner, lively and generous with his personality and keen to get to know people. He showed me around the apartment and in one room he had a whole editing suite set up. A moviola was set up in one corner and abetacam editing suite set up in another part of the large room. I was fascinated by the whole operation in this romantic and phantasmagorical city. It had never occurred to me that you could set up an editing suite and production operation in an apartment. Now of course with computers and non linear editing everyone is doing it. However it was then that I decided I would live in Moscow and have a similar studio set up in an apartment at some time. It was a dream and I didn’t really believe it myself but one which some years later has come to be. As I sit here looking out across a wintry night in Moscow from my 7th floor apartment with a couple of computers making up a the backbone of an editing suite with extra screens for monitoring and so on.

After I lived in Moscow for some time and it came time to buy an apartment we looked for somewhere in the centre and quite large so that it could double as a studio and a place to live. That way I felt it was a more economically workable investment. We knocked down a few walls during the renovation so that the apartment could double as a living space and a studio.For more complicated technical operations there is a studio not 10 minutes away which I can use whenever I need to.