Sydney dust storm

Woke up Wednesday morning and the world was red. Not just the sky, like when there is a sunset. The air was solid with red.
Not much sound about, as most of the birds were keeping shtum. The odd car and bus driving past.

Phone
went off. It was Jamie from school. Good weather for a bit of
time-lapse she reckons. Got the camera out and snapped a few shots, but
the red was thick and featureless. Not much moving around in there.

Facebook conversation Wednesday morning...

Her:
Hey Dave! Did you take this photo this morning (around 7am) ? I woke up
very early and the colors coming through my window were absolutely
amazing! I took a photo of my window at 6:30am. The sky was pink!

Me: OH crap, the end of the world is coloured PINK!!! (ha ha)
The sky was blood red when I woke up round six'ish so I rolled over and went back to sleep.
The apocalypse does not start without me.

The
dust storm did weird things to ones colour perception. Normal colour
indoors if the lights were on, but outside everything was tinted red.
The only contrast being blue light from the sun, or from buildings, or
car head lights.

The world outside the windows
gradually lightened. The Martian red fading till there was just a white
fog floating around. The air was clear by the afternoon.

A
mate reckons Wednesday morning was just like travelling. When you wake
up in a new place and normal stuff has a strange angle to it.

Cept that in this case the whole city had been transported.

So yesterday the Out-back decided to visit Sydney

This is a video I took yesterday when we all woke up to find our city smothered in red dust.

Sydney dust storm

Bondi Festival of Wind

Rhythm and observation .
Or research and juxtaposition???
This is a chance to put into practise stuff I've been learning at film school.

I went down to the Bondi kite fest, to shoot some 'observational' footage, and cut it up into two videos.
One focus's on the kite professionals who cordoned off a section of beach, and filled the air with an amazing variety of land tethered flying machines.

The second video is all about the amateurs. those folks who filled the grassy area behind the beach and throwing caution and canvas into the air.

Decided after extracting a series of short narratives (peoples kite flying adventures) to try interleaving a lot of the action.

Bondi Wind Festival 09: The Pro's

Bondi Wind festival 09: The amateurs

Research and Observation exercise: Observation

Our mission was to observe a place and create a piece. Extra marks for
extracting some sort of emotion or narrative from out of the 'found footage.'


I hung around a 'mallified' section of Sydney city.


Took shots of the people, and there was some sort of marquee being constructed so took some shots of that too.

Observation and Research: Observation exercise

First
time mixing time-lapse and full motion, first time mixing in a bit of
voice into the audio. We all presented 'rough cuts' and the class
commented.


Someone suggested that I add poetry so I made some up.


Mixed in some of the city noise that the Sony's internal mic picked up while filming.

Time lapse created with the Ricoh GX100 (wish Ricoh would get around to releasing the GX300) and a Sony video cam for the 25fps.

Walked to the park yesterday.

Two girls cusping puberty, long smooth legs, selling tiny succulent buds in pudding plates on the side of the footpath. Their merchandise highlighted by an arrangement of glass pebbles, of Turkish evil-eye blue .

Tips of bare branches on the trees in the park are fuzzy with green shoots erupting in super slow motion.

Two young women wearing black tee's, long shorts and studded belts, are towed along by a boxer pup. They stop and sit in the grass, and snog for a bit.

A couple. Sharply dressed young man in a grey fedora, pretty woman with burnt butterscotch hair, unfurl a rug and scatter cushions about. They lie holding each other for a bit, then he unfolds a paper, and she dives into a chip packet.

An old couple, leading a chocolate Lab stroll past.

The two girls finish kissing and stand. A guy in a white singlet, with the top-heavy look of having done weight training jogs past. He stops to play with the boxer pup, and chat to the girls.

I sit with my back against a tree trunk, and tip my head back. The sharp contrast between leaf dappled shade and the bright sunlight shifts across my lips. Reminds me of when I had nerve endings so new that pleasurable sensations were almost painful.

Spring is my favourite season. Not to hot, not too cold. Jusssst right.

Walked to the park yesterday.

Two girls cusping puberty, long
smooth legs, selling tiny succulent buds in pudding plates on the side
of the footpath. Their merchandise highlighted by an arrangement of
glass pebbles, of Turkish evil-eye blue .

Tips of bare branches on the trees in the park are fuzzy with green shoots erupting in super slow motion.

Two
young women wearing black tee's, long shorts and studded belts, are
towed along by a boxer pup. They stop and sit in the grass, and snog
for a bit.

A couple. Sharply dressed young man in a grey fedora,
pretty woman with burnt butterscotch hair, unfurl a rug and scatter
cushions about. They lie holding each other for a bit, then he unfolds
a paper, and she dives into a chip packet.

An old couple, leading a chocolate Lab stroll past.

The
two girls finish kissing and stand. A guy in a white singlet, with the
top-heavy look of having done weight training jogs past. He stops to
play with the boxer pup, and chat to the girls.

I sit with my
back against a tree trunk, and tip my head back. The sharp contrast
between leaf dappled shade and the bright sunlight shifts across my
lips. Reminds me of when I had nerve endings so new that pleasurable
sensations were almost painful.

Spring is my favourite season. Not to hot, not too cold. Jusssst right.