Directed by Levi Cranston
16mm hand processed, printed & projected at an intimate evening in the hills of The Northern Rivers alongside Lisa Kelly on Harp supported by strings
Windsong
The North Wind and the Sun
The North Wind and the Sun argued over which of them was stronger. Spotting a traveler on the road, they decided to test it: whoever could make him remove his cloak would win.
The North Wind blasted with all his force, but the harder he blew, the tighter the traveler clutched his cloak.
Then the Sun warmed the air with a gentle, steady glow, and soon the traveler loosened the cloak and slipped it off.
Something Old, Something New
Windsong was created by the harmonics of Lisa’s harp on a windy day. The wind graced the strings and they began to sing. You can hear this in the start of the song. The harp playing itself.
Aesop's Fable of the The North Wind & the Sun, was the bases of the imagery. Levi wanted to create a contrast between the two motifs and the choice to use the two different film stocks was decided. On a practical level this turned out to have an advantage to shooting half of the clip on Tri-X which is a reversal B&W stock that can be projected. Early on in the piece Levi knew he wanted to process and project this himself. I can’t take credit for any of that but I knew going into it this would be my first project unshielded by a Digital Intermediate. I knew i was shooting for the print, which is something I had not done until this point. But, with my light meter ready and confidence in my metering – I knew I could deliver the correct exposure in camera. Nowhere to hide…
Hand processing was also something Levi wanted to experiment with. This meant that we had to shoot strictly 50’ exposed spools. Anything longer would not fit inside the 100’ LOMO dev tanks that although called 100’ - are actually two 50’ spools. This proved to be a difficult task as we tried to keep track of our three different film stocks and how many foot had been shot on each.
So much so that in running around trying to keep up with Levi I mislabelled a roll of colour film as Tri-X. That becomes interesting later…
So as well as running the camera, tracking foot counts and shooting for a print. I found myself with a very full plate before even considering being a cinematographer. I’m very happy with my work as the print would later on prove to be a success and was almost exactly where i had planned with the exception of some timing issues in the darkroom.
When it did come time to process the rolls, we ended up with something around 18 spools to dev. Being the nature of hand processing and learning all of this new chemistry. A typo would soon ruin the chemicals on the first batch of film.
I however, mislabelled a roll of Colour stock as mentioned before. Which resulted in the film coming out completely green. ‘This looks like Birth Of A Nation sad Levi in a phone call where he explained what had happened. A devastating blow to loose any of the footage but we had now tainted two of the rolls and the pressure was on to perfect the process moving forward as to not affect the end result.
