She Got A TV Eye On Me

On Saturday night I did some filming at Swaeg's three years celebration. Armed with a borrowed analogue 8 mm video camera, I managed to capture most of Toiminto's set; also little bits and pieces of other performances and the DJ action. I have found the batteries with this specific camera always a bit unreliable, and of course it had to be that I ran out of juice in the middle of Joonas playing, but after finding an appropriately placed wall socket for the camera at the other end of the hall, I could continue filming after a short break. Well, perhaps some sections of this material will be found on the Net in the future after we manage to transfer it to DVD (always a slow process); with the permission of Swaeg guys and other people involved, naturally.

I can't claim to be any professional camera man, but during my teenage dreams of becoming a film director (which plans eventually died in their own delusional over-ambition), I managed to gather some rudimentary info about the theory, camera techniques and compositions involved in cinematography, which was also assisted by my hobby of photography that lasted for some years (before my friends at the time got mad at me always snapping photos of them). Then, after cinema, I found a new obsession with music, so that effectively put an end to my film dreams, which had anyway proved impossible to put into any fruition, as said. Getting hold of that video camera (belonging to a family member; of course I had no money to invest in my own piece of equipment) and filming some footage for our own video, I found out that maybe moving images still would be another interesting addition to my other already existing dilettante activities of pH-prefix.

Even with its crudeness, I was quite happy with my footage at Mayday Eve's Mayday! Rock!! Crazyness [sic]!! "livingroom festival" here in Tampere (about which later on in this blog), and the Swaeg footage also seemed to be OK. I consciously tried to avoid all the mistakes of a beginner, such as too many seasickness-inducing rapid zooms and nervously jumping camera movements, though all of it can't be avoided with a handheld camera, having to react quickly to all the constantly changing action, and also having to deal with party people all the time moving, dancing and pushing around you, in various celebratory states of being inebriated...

Ideally, the best situation to film gigs would be with at least three different persons with their own video cameras, everyone capturing different angles, then to be edited together in post-production, and preferably dubbed with a synchronized live sound taken directly from the mixing board, but in these spontaneous grassroots level underground party situations that sort of coordination can rarely be arranged.

So, nothing Stanley Kubrickally flashy here, but hopefully still serving its purpose as archive material of local underground music scene. When the next suitable occasion will arise to film some interesting UG music in action (and hopefully having somehow solved the headache with batteries before that), I hope to strike again. A dilettante, me? Absolutely.