David Moore - Offering
When Dave approached me to help him with his music video for his upcoming release on RVNG Intl. to me it was really framed up as a technical challenge: Can we make video look like cross stitch?
Yes. In fact I was able to do it that night. But how do we get the warm tactile charm of a handmade object using the charmless power of computer? Making sure we chose the right “resolution” or number of stitches so that it was neither too simple nor too detailed was hard to land on so we ended up pushing into the frame at times and I was surprised how pleasing it could be to lose all concept of subject and just watch the stitches change color.
Changing the frame rate to 8fps, the look we associate with stop motion animation helped. And it reminded me that I had a bunch of 8mm film I shot ages ago and that’s where it felt like the film started to make itself. The 8mm footage really felt like memories in the stitches, coming in and out of focus. Frequently it felt like I had no control whatsoever over how the color and shape was translated into stitches.
Leaning into the lack of control I started blending shots of my family with the sort of stuff you shoot on your phone and never know what to do with, water rippling or branches swaying. And somehow in the act of obscuring one shot with the next a sort of story took shape. I just went wherever the previous shot led me and used everything in arms reach to keep the flow going.
When something didn’t feel right I would listen to the song and walk around, hunting for things to shoot (there’s more than one shot from the decidedly uncinematic Myrtle ave). One day when one of us lamented we couldn’t fly, I loaded some 3d models and started building pieces of city and mountains and flew around those.
Here I have to say that I think the music is responsible for bringing real magic to the film. It made images that could easily have looked like a screensaver feel mercurial and familiar, like navigating a memory. I have made a lot of stuff in my career but this is the first time I’ve gotten to let feeling lead the way which I owe entirely to the song.
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