Making spoken word videos

Over the past few months due to Covid-19 I have been asked for a few spoken word videos. The results can be seen on Hugh Macmillan's Poems from the backroom #plagueopoets, as part of the upcoming Scottish Poetry Library's Vision 2020 project and Stowed Out 2020 [Locked In].

It is a very different thing making a video of yourself, as opposed to being filmed performing live. 

First and foremost for someone who has been living in the Borders (with for a considerable part of that time only access to local opportunities due to caring responsibilities), it is a liberation to do it yourself. Breathtaking. And share it yourself too! And the feel of a lot of doors opening. The viewing of other people's work has been astonishing also at events I never would have been able to get to like the Poetry Wales lockdown edition launch and Nine Arches Press Peter Kahn Little Kings launch: these events allowed me to effectively meet in person writers that I had only read before; private to well not exactly to the public but better as an online reading is intimate and powerful and feels personal.

Technically however my first thoughts on how to do this were quite basic. This was after all not going to be a multishot feature film  but quick and dirty engineering. So sitting in one place to read with a single static shot seemed wisest. I used Microsoft Teams and set up a meeting and recorded myself that way. The result was ok but felt a bit clunky requiring some tweaking in a video editor to remove the meeting name at the beginning. It also felt like I was speaking at a meeting which in my case was ok but might be a downer for some people. Subsequently I have converted to using my phone - still with me sitting at my desk to record so far - and I think I get a better result. Easy to move the phone around to get some simple effects but try them to see what they look like first. But also easy to knock the phone though if you wave your hands around a lot as I do and have it propped up against the laptop screen. You can sneak a cheatsheat on your screen too with nobody the wiser. Quality overall was better in my opinion and easy to stop and start. If you have no access to editing software don't start recording until you are ready (ideally with everything you need close by) and maybe even plan what you are going to say, read and how you will finish - to avoid long pauses. I just write some keywords on a bit of paper if I want to remind myself - the same kind of notes I would make for a live reading in person. One more tip is make sure to video landscape. You can see the dangers of filming portrait in the screenshot showing short films in my channel screengrab below. For those particular videos of water, it wasn't much of an issue but if your film is being spliced in with a lot of others - landscape may be a requirement.

For the Vision 2020 project I was tasked to make a video to accompany my commissioned poem. This one I wanted to be more experimental. I decided almost immediately to absent my person entirely from proceedings which works well with the poem but also usefully opened up a few more possibilities as to how it could be shot. For this project I used a full on video editing piece of software Adobe Premier Pro. It's not cheap so find someone or an organisation, school or college who can let you use their copy or use a free video editing utility and face the fact you may have to show their logo (not the end of the world). I wanted to weave together several short video source films I had made locally to where I lived - this stage of making the films on my phone was step one and involved an image walk around the settings of the poem. My poem has several times in it all in the same place - so I had to use diffferent nearby landscape to recreate the before and after. It ended up getting a bit drizzly once I reached the site itself (where the trees were cut down) but I think that added to the end product atmosphere - in fact I added some scratches and dust to grain the image further using effects. So make the most of unexpected changes in conditions and don't chuck stuff away just because it isn't exactly as you planned. I then made a voice recording - separately using the voice recorder again free on my phone. Once added, the video elements were quick to put together but there was quite a lot of sound tweaking to be done. This was because my source videos had sound which I liked; so it was kept in places and subdued in others. The voice track needed to be enhanced too. I really enjoyed experimenting with the editing software. 

My latest experiment has been with a video export of a Microsoft PowerPoint animation - you can watch it here. So no tool is too simple to integrate into your video.  You'll have this piece of software if you have Microsoft Office and you can export a ppt file as video - simple as that. Students can get Office for free btw!

Work in progress using this technique though: timings are the key issue for experimentation at this point - e.g. the first shot of titles lingers! Next time I will also record a voice track and add it using Premiere Pro again. 

There's plenty to include and explore - video, art, animation, voice, sound poems, editing all of which I pursue in my practice - along with what is effectively publishing to voice mechanism via YouTube. Not least the ability to quickly get poems out (not to mention building a bit of an archive). Experimenting with video certainly fills the performance gap enforced by lockdown and more. Try it! Let me know about your experiments with video in the usual way - happy to review and link to my favourites.

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My channel is here: perhaps of most interest to trainspotters and lovers of the very short unitheme film. If you have already checked out my insta @poetandgeek you will know the stuff I like.

walking the water

Doing the monthly BTO survey on "my stretch" of the river Tweed is a very good opportunity for wandering through some ideas too. Even while counting mallards (including 24 ducklings in various stages of growth), grey heron, black-headed gull, mute swan, oystercatcher (my birds as they are the helpers of Bridget in Gaelic - gille-brìghde), dipper and goosander.

Onto the cauld which stretches across the river to create the pool you just saw and has these metallic edges as it scatters down onto the rocky section below.

Finally to a lower pool and its weedfilled cobbles.

Later I made a long audio recording where I get a bit distracted by a grey wagtail which flies over my head towards the end. But unfortunately blogger doesn't seem to like that. Still I enjoyed myself and got some good birds too. Creativity and wellbeing mix well with science and nature.

Burn your thumb

Take a look at Burned Thumb in its Facebook entity. (The story of the burned thumb is a good one known to me from the stories of Fionn mac Cumhaill and concerns gaining an understanding of all the languages of the world and salmon - subjects close to p&g's heart.)

Elizabeth Rimmer its host describes herself as "poet, gardener and river-watcher". And her site and poetry are full of things pleasing to p&g readers. She is also one of the editors of Stravaig the online journal of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics.

Find out more here http://burnedthumb.co.uk/ and here https://www.facebook.com/burnedthumb?fref=ts and here http://www.redsquirrelpress.com/RimmerBIOG.html

Catchment workshops

Poet Fiona Russell runs a series of workshops in connection with the Catchment project in which she worked with four visual artists to explore

… the Urr Water in Galloway ...from the uplands

around Loch Urr, through the woodland gorges beyond Corsock and

the fertile grasslands around Haugh of Urr, to the meanders which pass

around the old harbours of Dalbeattie and Palnackie, out to Kippford and

Rockcliffe, fishing villages transformed by visitors and sailing boats, to

the tidal estuary, islands, and the grandeur of the Solway Firth.

Saturday 30 November 1.30 – 4pm Inspiration:

Participants will be encouraged to enjoy writing about the themes covered
by the exhibition from exercises given by writer Fiona Russell. Explore new
ways to increase your writing repertoire with an experienced and award winning
D&G writer. Please bring notebook and pen.

Other dates (different but connected workshops and a break from holiday preparations):

• Saturday 14 December 1.30 – 4pm
• Wednesday 18th December 7.30 – 8.30pm

You can find out more here http://www.dumgal.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2333&contactid=3623

Rains

The rain comes in oblong blocks and straight lines. It has filled the river up like a child's scribbling drawing of a river all felted pen and green sliced marks reeds. Everything is still lush leafy and thick. The rain cannot break that. The rowan's dotting red and oranged berries with starlings attending. Servants of the rowan.

I walk in a raincoat that I bought with money. I am fit again. I walk between the rain lines and don't ever get wet.

It is good to be back.

More riverbank listening

Where the tributaries meet the river, and really it is better than the sea in some cases (whatever the Waterboys say...)

Image by Jules Horne

Check out further responses from World Listening Day here http://workingthetweed.co.uk/2013/06/30/riverbank-listening-a-world-listening-day-project/

Riverbank listening 02

I have walked the dry Huntlyburn before. (It loses it water to farming needs in a reservoir further up each year.)

This poem first appeared in Northwords Now.

The burn bed

The sheets are pulled back

leaving a scuff of algae

like the velvet jacket

on the back of a drunk.

The stepping stones of the ford

mosaic the mud

unseen

for a generation.

That last pool endured

days of scum and midge

pokes for fry

until it too was dry.

Desert scrolls and stones

litter this new path

beneath meadowsweet walls;

the depth of the pot

attracts a shoal of blackbirds

to hoe its moist furrows.

Alight.

I wake myself to follow.

© Bridget Khursheed

Riverbank listening 01

I have been working on this project around about 6pm at the junction of the Huntlyburn and the Tweed.

The Huntlyburn is dry and the Tweed flowing.

An opportunity to follow the Huntlyburn tributary riverbed now a path with large cobbles moving and clattering beneath my feet.

Sandmartins whose nest entrances I can now see fly in arcs above. Grass and thick vegetation moves swishing and pulled by the breeze the main river sucks towards it. And the oystercatchers - followers of Bridget - call in alarm as I stravaig through their territory.

A drainage pipe marks the join between wet and dry river beds. And the water of the Tweed flows with a fast fluent sound; and a bass note of glugs as the water passes over the pipe.

How many notes does water flow contain?

Riverbank listening – a world listening day project

An epically poetandgeek kind of way to spend Thursday week by listening to a river and writing about it.

Do you want to join international artists and environmentalists in a global listening project? People from all over the world are invited to spend some time during the day listening to their environment, be it urban, rural or wilderness.

Are you interested in contributing to a creative celebration of the River Tweed and its tributaries or of your own nearest river system?

Celebrate world listening day on the 18th July in this case by lying down by a river junction pool and writing down what you hear...

You can find out more here http://workingthetweed.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/riverbank-listening-a-world-listening-day-project/