Not Applepicking in Hong Kong

Sorry about the "Not... in Hong Kong" title.

I just couldn't resist.



Anyway, here is a short film that I edited over the weekend using footage I shot of my parents some years ago. I had the footage on Hi8, paid to have it transferred to a DVD that my computer, it turns out couldn't read. Had to search the web for a program to convert that DVD to a format that my computer could read (hence the strange white line across the screen.)

I shot it originally on a PXL-2000, aka Pixelvision, which is a toy video camera that Fisher Price made back in the 1980s. I think the original retail price in the U.S. was $99 and it used audio cassettes to record video and audio.

That camera has since spurred its own filmmaking aesthetic, in which filmmakers use it to make an anti-slick, anti-corporate statement. I think a guy even shot a feature on it, but I'm not sure about the distribution.

Filmmakers have described shooting in Pixelvision as akin to sketching while shooting with film or higher resolution video as drawing or painting.

I wasn't really making a statement or sketching. I was just curious about what Pixelvision was all about and managed to borrow the camera for a weekend from Doug Ing, an indie filmmaker who was doing a MFA at the time at City College.

It does produce an image (b&w and very low resolution) that's like nothing else.

Anyway, October makes me think more and more about my parents, as we did go applepicking with them every October. I'm not even a big fan of apples, but the apples sure were good right off the tree.

Picking apples also reminds me of the Andrei Tarkovsky film IVAN'S CHILDHOOD, in which there's a haunting scene involving apples.

Anyway, enjoy and please leave comments if you have any. I enjoy reading them.