Naomi Bolser

PhD Through practice 

When I embarked on my PhD my aim was to raise awareness for young women filmmakers of the tradition of women's amateur filmmaking.  They would then have a context in which to place their own experimental moving image practice. 

 

As I started my PhD I was working with Art Foundation students, teaching them experimental filmmaking. I became aware that the young women had no context in which to think about their own filmmaking and I found it problematic to explain that video was a valid form of expres I found it problematic to explain that video was a valid form of expression, which had its own complexity.  I wanted to address this issue in my research and to provide a resource for similar young women and teachers who would now have a context for such personal works.

 

I always used basic camera settings, altering the exposure and frame rate to give an uncanny quality to the images. It was important that these effects were created at the time of image capture. I did not want to add generic video effects which I felt was a narrow and nonspecific approach, rather I would use the camera settings creatively to produce effects. 

 

At the time this seemed a more authentic approach to making images. I was fascinated by the focal length of the lens which could capture extreme close up when manipulated in certain ways. This feature of camcorder lenses allowed me to shoot in macro which had always interested me. I liked macro because it amplified tiny features, turning them into screen size. This also allowed the colour saturation that I wanted which was intensified by boosting the exposure settings.sion, which had its own complexity. 

 

For example, a young woman had made a short piece where she filmed herself in profile sobbing as she drove through a landscape visible to her right. This piece was extremely affecting to me, and I was struck by its simple structure and its ability to express so eloquently, yet so sparse in construction. My thoughts were, 'one girl crying in a car, a few short minutes, yet a millennium of female pain expressed in one continuous shot'. 

 

This piece brought me back to my own early work because I knew that I also had no context with which to place my first experimental pieces. I wanted to address this issue in my research and to provide a resource for similar young women and teachers who would now have a context for such personal works.

 

I always used basic camera settings, altering the exposure and frame rate to give an uncanny quality to the images. It was important that these effects were created at the time of image capture. I did not want to add generic video effects which I felt was a narrow and nonspecific approach, rather I would use the camera settings creatively to produce effects. 

 

At the time this seemed a more authentic approach to making images. I was fascinated by the focal length of the lens which could capture extreme close up when manipulated in certain ways. This feature of camcorder lenses allowed me to shoot in macro which had always interested me. I liked macro because it amplified tiny features, turning them into screen size. This also allowed the colour saturation that I wanted which was intensified by boosting the exposure settings.