Do you sometimes feel too tied down and restricted by narrative and convention? Going experimental with your filmmaking can bring a breath of fresh air into your creative output. In this blog post, I will recount my experience in making my experimental short film Etna (2023).
Pre-production
The development of the project starts where the previous one ended. As soon as My Map (2022) finished post-production, we got back to work with the same team to move on to our next creative brief, though we were also joined by newcomer Luc. We were tasked with taking inspiration from quotes by David Lynch to produce a short experimental film at a length of three minutes. We picked the following two quotes as references:
I don’t think it was pain that made [Vincent Van Gogh] great – I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.
We all have at least two sides. The world we live in is a world of opposites. And the trick is to reconcile those opposing things. I’ve always liked both sides. In order to appreciate one you have to know the other. The more darkness you can gather up, the more light you can see too.
We latched onto the idea of basing the film around an artist living and working in Sheffield, taking inspiration from both the corporate/glossy side of the city and the more industrious/gritty side of the city. Even though this was intended to be an experimental film, for our own satisfaction we did attempt to make the film have some semblance of a narrative, through the subtle journey and artwork by this painter.
When it came time to cast this artist, we all looked towards Elliott, as it had been his premise to begin with and I had earned myself a break after acting in My Map. Luckily it would be a non-speaking role, which meant it was quite easy to work with in the context of the film.
We went on a location scout of a few areas of interest, notably the Kelham Island region. This was the basis of much of the industrial footage seen in the film. We went with Graves Gallery for the opening sequence, and they were more than happy to allow us to film in there for a brief period, so long as we followed a certain precaution…
Production
Our filming consisted of three branches. The first branch was our opening sequence in the gallery. Elliott was dressed in a trenchcoat that I had on hand, and his character walked amongst the gallery for inspiration. Our only real limitations were with the lighting and other guests. We were unable to use any of our lighting equipment as it could damage the paintings, which led to the footage in this room being poorly lit. As we were filming within normal hours for the gallery, we also had to patiently wait for other guests to exit our shots before we could start filming, which could often be a frustrating amount of time. The stair sequence was also filmed at Graves Gallery, with a key reference for us being “Relativity” by M.C. Escher. This nonsensical set of stairs was maybe one of the more experimental parts of the film, and with today’s knowledge and expertise, we would be able to make it lean much more heavily into that domain.
The second branch of our filming was the painting studio. We staged this in one of our university’s filming studios and darkened the surrounding areas as much as we could to light only the central desk and the artist. Being in this space gave us so many ideas for shots and setups, and much of that day was improvised. As we came up with new actions for the artist to do, we scrambled to find the best shots to represent them. We did not have a track and dolly on the day but we did not let that stop us. We found a stepladder with wheels and placed our camera on top of it, securing it down with my belt. It was perfectly secure, just a little suspicious-looking!
The final branch of our filming was the collection of insert shots. This was split between filming in the city centre and filming in Kelham Island. The city shoot and the artist shoot had both been slow days for filming, with the amount of footage that we were able to collect feeling a little underwhelming. I distinctly remember the very first shot in the studio took an hour to capture, and we did not even use it.
When it came time to move on to the insert shots, I was the only one available to film. So I set out on my own into Kelham Island and over 2 hours, I was able to bring home over 100 shots. While not all of them were good, enough of them were for us to be able to make the film two times over. We wanted to portray Sheffield as a city in motion, so it was important for us to show this contrast between the more modern side of the city and its industrial past.
Post-production
The editing process was long and stressful due to the wealth of footage that we had. We were also operating in an environment where there were no distinct production roles in our group, so some days there could be four editors, and other days there could be one.
One of the key decisions made in post-production was the name of the film. We wanted it to be an abstract title without an obvious meaning, so we derived it from the title of the painting “Mount Etna from Taormina” which is seen at the beginning of the film.
Elliott produced the music for the film, and we put extra attention into creating an overwhelming soundscape in the city locations, to add further contrast to the quieter art studio shots. Another consideration we made was the connection between the choice of paints and the surrounding shots of the city. We try to motivate the paints and colours that our artist uses by linking them to inserts of the city, to directly show how this character is taking inspiration from the city as a whole for this abstract painting.
The decision to not show the painting in full clarity was always a thought we agreed upon. We felt that this task of distilling the whole city into a film, or painting, was such an impossible task that it would be best to leave it to the audience's imagination and have them seek out further questions about the nature of the city.
Release of Short Film
Etna was first teased at the end of our 2022 year-in-review video. This is a tactic that we have utilised a few times now and is always a sneaky and satisfying way to make our audience aware that a new project is coming. The release of the film was soon followed up with the deleted scenes video. As mentioned previously, we filmed so many shots of the city that it felt painful to let them go to waste, and releasing them in a short reel of “deleted scenes” was seen as a good way to get that footage out into the world. As I have moved on to other short films, I have enjoyed looking back fondly at Etna as a humble but inspired start to my current filmmaking aspirations. I was reminded of this satisfaction when we were lucky enough to have it screened at the SHU Film Society’s Student Film Screening earlier this month! You can read more about the process of organising that event in last week’s blog.
Until the next one!
- Mitchell
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