I was using a Canon 5D Mk2 to film the production, it had two measly problems that I had fixed before arriving in Ipswich. The first problem was how the camera ate up battery life like a hungry whale in a shrimp farm, during filming it would last only up to an hour and a half, which for a camera is surprising, and the whereabouts of a DC IN socket is either non-existent or beyond me, so it can’t be plugged into the wall. I solved this by having 3 batteries and recharging them all, as well as having one charging on the go. The second problem was how the filming function took up about 3 minutes per Gigabyte of Memory space, meaning an hour of filming required 20GB of space on Compact Flash Format. I was going to film the 1 hour long production twice (the dress rehearsal and the real performance) so I was glad that I had acquired two 32GB Compact Flash cards beforehand. Other than those two problems, I haven’t encountered anything notably annoying. It is a camera that can capture some astoundingly beautiful shots.
It was 4:50 pm, the dress rehearsal was about to start in ten minutes. I watched as the actors started to do warm up excersizes, they were bending, stretching, leaping, jumping-landing-and-crumpling, doing cartwheels, chanting, etc. This always interested me for some reason, because some actors and actresses seem to have to transform themselves before getting on stage, as though it is a mental transformation as well as a physical one. A similar thing happens in filmmaking too, which apparently depends on whether or not you came from a theatrical background. Once I saw an actress leave the film set by going outside and then screaming ‘Wanker’ at the top of her lungs for ten minutes because the director had asked her to be ‘angry’ for the next scene.
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It was 5:15pm and the director was getting anxious, she started to pace a little. I suppose I would too. After calling all members of cast onto stage, including Zach and Jamie of the musical portion of the play, the dress rehearsal began. For the shoot I decided to also use a borrowed Canon 500D to film the musicians, and a Sony HF-S11 with a mic attachment planted on a ladder to grab a wild track of the sound. It started with a hush, and a dimming of lights, I was pretty psyched since it was happening less than 5 metres away. I filmed in that position for the next hour, occasionally going to the other cameras to check on them.
There’s something about Half man/Half clam that I found immensely appealing, it had elements that reminded me of the film ‘The Science of Sleep’ or an episode of ’Round the Twist’, and it is very simple. Like, on the simplicity scale of 1 to 10, I would say this play was 4. It’s easy to understand, but isn’t made for sesame street, it uses simple theatrical poetry, and features a puppet with a clam’s head.
Take your average hero’s journey and blend in an entire musical score with metaphorical dance sequences thrown in and you’ll get something that kind of feels like an ipod. Simple, yet it delivers the goods. The Story revolves around a man who has a paralytic fear of seafood and anything related to the sea because his father died after eating a shrimp, theoretically due to a lethal allergic reaction. His love life is notably tampered with by this persistent problem, which is hounding him time and again by making social occasions awkward or causing him to faint in the worst of times, he eventually puckers up and fights his fear. Literally. By attacking the puppet with the clam’s head, which had been established as the physical manifestation of his phobia.
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When it finished, there was a surprisingly long list of constructive criticism from both the actors, director and backstage. No doubt about it, they were trying to get the play, pitch perfect.
I went back to dressing room 1 to check up on Zach and the master track of the album. He had this long, serious expression, and we just sat in the room for a while in silence. After sometime he spoke, “I spent a fuckload of time working on this music, and now, of all places, it has to be unfinished, I should have done this in the car, another hour, just one hour, is all I need”
The play was going to start in twenty minutes. I suddenly remembered a quote I heard from god knows where, “No it’s the continuing series of small tragedies that send a man to a madhouse not the death of his love, but a shoelace that snaps with no time left…”. Before we knew it, it was 7pm, and we had to get back out there. The album was unfinished.
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The crowd size was suddenly depressing, there was loads of people, about sixty people or more, and they were filing in and being shown their seats by the theatre attendants. We could have sold them our album, from where I was filming I thought I could see Zach and Jamie’s sullen look.
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The production was even better the second time round, and I managed to film the whole thing on a wider angle, capturing the entire stage instead of segment close ups. The Canon 5D Mk2 had another frustrating capability, which is that it can only film up to 4GB in length, equivalent to 12 minutes. I suppose this is so that they can fit onto DVD’s easier. This problem came at a bad time, since I dozed off (I was exhausted by that point) for about five minutes when one of their hypnotic dance sequences came up, the camera reached it’s 12 minute mark right then, and I lost about 5 minutes of the play. The crowd loved the play, and responded well, laughed when it was meant to be funny, and sniggered when it was an innuendo or joke.
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After it all finished, we got ourselves back to London, drank and smoked. I was asked to edit a 5 minute trailer from what I filmed. I’ll be getting on with that soon. Actually I finished a version of it two days ago, and here it is:
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It’s a pity the album wasn’t finished in time, but listening to it now through headphones, I think it has potential on it’s own anyway. It reminds me of when I used to listen to The Eels, specifically their album Electro-Shock Blues, and how the whole album was like a poetic dystrophic story. Perfectionists and fatigue, what can ya do about it, from what I know, the two are connected, like lovers! So yeah…the end.
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