Rostrum Camera Concept

For this semester’s second project in video two, we are faced with the task of creating a narrative in the style of a rostrum camera. A rostrum camera was a clunky old camera setup used to animate 2d images (most commonly seen in documentaries where only still photographs of the time were available).

The first point of call for me in this project was to have a concept, which I could be passionate about and that could also be suitable to this technique. In a previous pitch I made for a sound project I wanted to explore mental health in the mid 1900’s, and in particular the experience of women during this modern dark age of psychological understanding. After a bit of perusing I found an Australian poet, Sandy Jeffs, whose collection of poems Poems From the Madhouse inspired me.

With the help of a friend, whose passion is in social work, we devised a structure for the narrative. The piece will have three main aural elements; the character, voice of reason and voices of no-reason. The images will be taken in a studio against a black background. Movement will be achieved through lighting changes, along with subtle and rigid transitions between different movements of the character.

Bellow is a link to a pdf, which is a written plan inclussive of my very brief audio and visual directions.

Voice of no-reason

entry thumbnail by Flickr user David Glover