SWF-31
	The Process
	MATERIALS
	- 100ft of Kodak 3378 high-contrast negative film - Bolex 16mm camera - Nikon Coolpix 5000 digital camera - Sony DCR-TRV6 digital video camera
	PROCESS
	I shot the film over-exposed and out-of-focus. Actually, I planned a progression of focus with the images, so that the film would start soft-focus and evolve into sharp focus as the shots progressed. As the film stock was so slow, I shot with the aperture at its widest. I hand-processed the film as a negative, pushing the film by leaving it in the developer for an extra minute. I decided to make a bold move with the processing and not rely on the safety of tests. I wanted to experiment with the whole procedure so I developed all 100ft at once. This resulted in a mass of film crammed into a small bucket, and the agitation was excessive. I was constantly jamming the film deeper into the bucket to immerse it in developer -- this motion was non-stop as, inevitably, pieces of the film would poke out of the developer. The result was scratches on every single frame of the film. I had indeed wanted scratches, but I did not expect the images to look abused. I had the negative transferred to Mini DV; I intended to have audio play a major role in the film and the fusion of audio to image was to be done in Final Cut Pro. In Final Cut Pro, I slowed down the images and noticed that the abundant scratches became beautiful and ethereal. The nicks became their own sort of animation. I played with the speed of the images based on the performer's movements and content of the audio. For instance, when the performer leans to look out the window, I speed up her movements and scratches to real-time to create anxiety. And when the women speak of explicit sexuality, I also speed up the scratches to convey excitement and discomfort. The atmospheric audio -- trucks beeping, children playing, my mother singing -- are recordings I made on Mini DV in Vancouver. I recorded the women's voices with a digital stills camera that had audio-recording capabilities. The stills-camera audio is tinny and degraded, like the sound from an answering machine. This audio aesthetic is rough and suitable for SWF-31. I did not write the women's monologues. They are extracted from a telephone dating service (Lava Life) and from pornography websites. In the case of the dating service, I transcribed the monologues; in the case of the pornography, I copied the written material. I had friends and colleagues recite the monologues into my digital stills camera.
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