Video- Fast Shutter-speeds and the Hotshoe Flash

After the first presentation and feedback on my work I started to think about the ways that I could combine my photographs and video. My first thought was to attempt to transfer the look of my polaroid images onto film, using similar lighting techniques, thereby drawing an instant parallel and link between the two media. I then began to think of a single shot from the opening of the film The Watchmen. The scene is of a crime scene, a murder, around the 1930s or 40s, the thing which really interested me was the way the slow-motion seemed to near freeze the action, slowing everything down so much that even the flash of the camera can be seen in every stage, as it begins to glow dimly, before increasing in intensity and fading out again. I wondered whether this effect could be applied to my own work, so I took out a video camera and began to experiment.

So as to have the smoothest footage once the shot was played in slow-motion I increased the shutter-speed to 1/1000th of a second, turned off the lights and began to flash my hotshoe on different objects. The problem I encountered with this was that, without the editing software on-camera I couldn't see the results properly until it had been edited, which meant it was particularly difficult to see which shots were working. Once i got the footage into the edit suite I found that there was only a single shot that worked in the way I had hoped. This is below.

There are far better examples of this on youtube, as the links at the end of my short film will no doubt show, however I have learned several things from this experiment so as to improve my work in the future. I intend to retry this piece, using either two flashes or a single flash and reflector, as well as revisiting my original subject, flowers, more specifically weeds. I want the visuals to appear out of obscurity, the darkness, be lit as in my previous images before disappearing in the white flash and falling back into darkness. The sounds I feel should come in waves to accompany the images, rising and peaking at the point the flowers are washed away by the white light. I feel the next step is to film the visuals in the studio and then begin to work on a soundscape.