get the lead out: it’s noting, really: video poems — it’s about recording

by Christine Swint

The concept of a film poem first crossed my radar in 1982, when I was in school in Athens, Ga., and I went to see a filming of St. Francis of Assisi by artist and film director James Herbert, widely known as the director of many of REM’s music videos. It was a short piece, full of lingering shots with symbolic and metaphorical images. Herbert used the term “film poem” to explain his work.

I stored that event in the back of my mind, never thinking I would create anything along the lines of Jim Herbert’s film poem, until I attended a conference this past summer in Montreal with The International Association of the Study of Dreams. Two student winners of the dream art award made a beautiful video of a recurring dream one of them had, and I loved how they arranged it by stripping out the original sound track and supplying narration and music to accompany the images. I wish I had a link to their names and their video, but it is nowhere to be found on the conference site.

After Montreal I decided to take snippets of videos I had taken, edit them together, and write a poem to the video. I started with 2- or 3-second videos I had taken in Montreal and in Atlanta, and also combined some still shots. I chose images I liked, without trying to rationalize my choices.

After I edited the clips into a 2-minute video, I stripped out the sound (background noises and conversation), and then wrote to the images as if I were telling a dream I had. After I wrote the free-write, I revised it into a poem, and then recorded it as a sound track for the video. My computer, a Mac, comes with Garage Band for music and voice recordings.

Most video programs have the ability to lay down two soundtracks, as my program, iMovie, does. I chose some gentle music as a background to give the piece some atmosphere. The music part is touchy, because there are copyright laws to uphold. I used music that iTunes includes in its iMovie softwarefor the purpose of making personal projects. You can make your own music, too, with drums, a guitar, harmonica, or even a kazoo! You could also ask a musician friend to compose and play the music track for your poem.

Here’s an example of my second video poem, published on Qarrtsiluni, titled “Time Capsule Chronicles.”

So far I’ve made a video first, and then written the poem, but there are great videos out there that have been done in reverse. In fact, probably most videos poems are made by writing the poem first and then making the video. One that I love was a collaboration published on Qarrtsiluni, “Letters from a Parasitic Head,” a poem by Dana Guthrie Martin and video by Donna Kuhn. Dana wrote the poem first, and the video came after.

Whether you write the poem first, or write to a series of images, you will need to have a supply of your own video clips on hand. My little camera, a Kodak, has a video function on it, but now I’m starting to use a flip camera, a pocket-sized video camera that records in high definition, under low-light conditions. I think about video the same way I do with still shots –- if something I see intrigues me, I take the video, remembering to linger on the scene for a few seconds to allow the eye a chance to assimilate the image. It’s noting, really!