humph

I am in the 3rd week now of a stint of editing. Part of me is suspicious of the reasons behind such a sudden indulgence, or should I say sudden change in indulgence. Having to stop boxing so suddenly has left me with a somewhat brimming cup of unspent energies, and needless to say, a whole new bunch of hours to spend doing something else. But somehow, I feel convinced that this period of making was due to arrive, regardless. I am also feeling the shame of not coping very well with the task of producing a half-decent essay for PGPD. So editing I have been. But I am engrossed in editing footage of sparring by a process of cropping down to heads and feet. I am doing this frame-by -frame and using about 3 minutes (real time) of film. Which is quite a lot of frames. I have “shopped” around but doing it FbyF is the only way I’ve found of achieving the effect I need. The huge positive is that as I am plodding through the frames I have had to resize the parameters of the “box” (the result of the cropping) several times over the space of a second and this has forced me to set up a kind of rule of aesthetic to be able to make decisions on each of the frames. Short of treating each frame as an individual “painting”, each frame does, and has each time, been treated as an image in its own right.
This has almost felt like a piece completely separate to the end-goal piece. The process is a performance.
Looking at early roughs of the results as a running piece of film threw up a couple of suprises. These pieces have a completely different feel to them than those previously that involved a lot of slo-mo. As these pieces are currently being run in real time, things seem to be moving quicker (I am fully aware how stupid that sounds), but what I mean is the point of the piece seems to be evident sooner in real time. There are moments, albeit fleeting, that become balletic, interspersed with more static moments of tension and crescendo.
I feel somewhat hypnotised by the repetition of both the footage and the editing process and am hoping that this communicates beyond myself.

I am trying to maintain some of my recent fitness with a regime of running on a daily basis. This can be a tedious regime. If one could find a way of editing while running….

on the ropes

Having seen recently some reference to artists work, in particular the new work by american artist Paul Pfeiffer, “The Saints”, showing at the Junction Gallery in the shadow of the new Wembly Stadium, which is a piece consisting of the crowd noise from the 1966 world cup final. This I felt was in-keeping with some ideas I have had about the contextual aspects of the boxing environment. I had been thinking of a piece of film focussing just on the crowds at a boxing bout. The piece would be a film starting at the entrance of the boxers and would end on their exit. It would only show the crowd for the duration of the bout. Another piece was to be footage of an empty ring with the audio or audios from a bout or bouts. A third piece was a little more involved, and probably more than I could cope with, but would have been footage of fighters in the ring for several rounds, or maybe even one single round, but with the boxers removed from view so all that is left is the movement of the ropes and the audio. As this would require a huge amount of work with unfamiliar software, I will put this on hold!!
In the meantime, I have prepared a piece that gives a similar impression. It has been done by editing the footage to only show the ring when the boxers are out of frame. This is made all the easier by the fact that all my boxing footage suffers from frame cropping due to the limited space to position cameras in the gym.

The drawing board

I have started to analyse the footage I have with a view to re-shooting and re-staging. With this in mind I am manipulating the footage I do have in preparation for the new stuff.

Damn and blast

My thumb is broken. I am in complete denial about the ramifications of this situation. I hate casualty.

Ouch!

Just finished my next sparring session with Cleaver. 8 rounds this time. Very enjoyable, but I have to re-learn my jab. He catches me too many times with his and this is down to my own innactivity. Midway through the second round and I threw a left hook which landed aukwardly and bent my thumb back. This hurt at first but adrenalin covered this up I guess. After boxing on for a further6 1/2 rounds I figure the damage was done. Today I am in a lot of pain and there is swelling. Might be going to casualty. No sparring till this is sorted out. Bugger.

isdisdsifscdg

Critical mass here, or not. Still fine-tuning what I am trying to achieve regards my visual work. Discoveries I’ve made through the filming/editing I’ve done recently have involved a certain return to the role of artist! I feel it necessary now to step out of the box/ring and try to achieve things that explain, or translate my interest or fascination in boxing, and present it in a more readable format.
I have just finished a piece called 2% which is the footage of a 3 minute round, slowed down to 2% of its original speed. As simplistic as this seems, the effect both with the visual footage and the audio is to allow a hugely expanded facility to analyse and enjoy the movement of boxers at work. This in itself is powerful as a primarily visual piece but fails to really shake things up to a profound level.In some ways, one could argue that anything that moves, if slowed down to this extent, would increase in its aesthetic value and content. It has, though, revealed to me a number of potential avenues to explore. In particular the level of activity and information that is contained in a split-second of real time.

Axe to grind

Update. I have now sparred with “Cleaver”. He caught me a few times and re-tenderised my nose, but all in all it was a much more evenly balanced pairing. He needs to lose weight as he is tipping the scales at 11.5 stone, but he is similar to me in height and experience. My jab seemed a little limp and off target which could be explained by my lack of experience in fighting a shorter man, but i was relieved to find that my newly developed over-hand right cross was devestating and hit the mark each time.
I enjoyed the opportunity to box someone my own size (if not my own weight), and want to spar alot more with him. If it turns out that we are paired up for a bout, then it would not be in my best interest to do so. Irony.
I spar with him again on wednesday. I shall film it, it may be the last time…