TITLE: The Fish Video
STATUS/DATE: 1993
GENRE: Anybody's guess
APPROX LENGTH: 6 min
LOCATION: Originally Filmed in the Shenandoah Valley: Woodstock, Virginia

WHAT IS:
Miniature jeeps, exploding sardines, and early technical creativity with Stone Age tools.Many people would not count an early unrefined work such as this, but I mark this as the beginning of what would be precise moment I was bitten by the film / video bug. After it was finished I realized that I could get a reaction out of people. The reaction from this short in particular, was not one of guttural laughter as it was gruesome with exploding sardines to The Doors “The End", but one of uneasiness and head scratching. It was a reaction none the less and I became sucked into the world of moving images. 

Another note that was worth mentioning is that now videos like this are a dime a dozen (or even a dime for two dozens). Now it is commonplace to see several videos of this type on Youtube. Youtube was launched about 2004. So this video in particular had no outlet at the time except just people copying it and passing it around for a good laugh at the unsuspecting captive audiences reaction. Its funny to think that roughly 11 years later there would be an outlet for goofy weird videos such as this that are seemingly unending or infinite. 

PRODUCTION: 
Shot on 8mm tape, never sold or distributed just done for amusement between friends used The Doors ’ "The End". To my knowledge there were two different incarnations of this video. The first edit was done with two VCR’s and a tape cassette recorder plugged into the audio in jacks. The camera was not of the HD variety, but more old-school. The degradation through dubbing gave it a false antiquity with staticy artifacts that I would come to appreciate and eventually use to my advantage stylistically. The second was re-edited within digital means during the Boxcrew era. This was a way long time ago, but the thing that is freshest in mind is that using a camera for the first time captured my imagination. The grass swirled in these off patterns the motion and cuts edited back and forth made for almost a psychedelic experience. There are many details about this that make it unique, one is , in hindsight, I'm not sure how or why this is edited so seamlessly as it is. This is perhaps the first time that I understood that sound and editing (working together) is essential to the process. In subsequent projects editing will be understood as a language unto itself. Even though this was the year that I received my first camera, after the project was done, I realized that film/ video was more than merely running around with a camcorder. The hours I and a family friend spent that day into the night pausing and un-pausing with our only guide the tape counter on both VCR’s.

I remember we made a thorough time line of the song and made dots and labeled them as to when the cuts were going to happen. I saw this piece again recently in 2009 and I am in udder-shock that with such a rough editing procedure that we were able to line up the most detailed cues with the song using just a VCR clock counter as reference points. At the one point when the music builds to a crescendo the army jeep full of sardines looses control and gets jettisoned off a small cliff. I never could figure out how that was lined up so well with such crude machinery. During the time of the Boxcrew re-edit, come to think of it, that series of cuts was practically even more painstaking even with crude digital means.

The shots are fun to watch as were experimenting with different settings for speed and motion. We would set the sardines out on patrol, I would line up the camera, and a friend would sniper the little guys from behind a grassy knoll just out of view of the camera.

The outcome was more gruesome than we expected, but oddly humorous in some way. Exploding canned fish in tomato sauce can be fun when used wisely. One other thing that can be used wisely, and this goes for any film or  video is the atmosphere. That particular day back in 1993 it was the windiest that it had been in months. This helped to create the illusion that the camera’s perspective was perhaps of a miniature chopper piloted by sardine comrades.

I have come to find that aberrations in atmosphere or sky are worth paying attention to, there have been countless times in film or photography that a sky or simply the condition of the atmosphere cannot be duplicated with even some of the best digital processes in the world. Nature is both a blessing and a hindrance to a budget though, and should be planned around accordingly, but that is another subject for another time.

On a final note I wish to explain that there is a certain attention that must be paid to the position of light and shadows on a production. When you are young and impatient emphasis is generally placed on camera and story.  As I would find out years later there are many technical aspects to making shorts and features that quite frankly are hard to keep up with out the right tools, team and paperwork, it just boggles the mind.

thanks for taking an interest,

tjparsons