Evening all. When I heard a friend of mine was setting up a small video project with her friends I was interested to see what they’d come up with. So far their work has mostly been experimental, video montages cut to good music, but with work commencing on their first major short, I felt it was time to help raise a little awareness and ask her some questions about their work. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you, Techno Disco Video.
Sean: Hi Cait, could you start by just telling me a bit about Techno Disco Video and the work you produce?
Caitlin: Well it started off as many a myspace project doubtlessly does on a wintery night, when me and Georgie (my partner in TDV) where in my room basically bemoaning the lack of opportunities for doing creative work as young people in our area so decided to start setting up something we could create ourselves - one of the problems with some youth work we find is that it's a little too structured over what you can and can't do in the project and although we didn't have a clear idea of what we wanted to do we knew it was going to be a video based project and we knew we wanted it to be in our own style - whatever that turned out to be. Our first 'TDV' night out was spent wandering around the northern quarter one night just filming the things we thought made good 'moving photos ' and then matching them to music we like. Simple as.
Bitta this Bitta that
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Sean: You're subsequent work seems to be in the same style. Is your primary interest in these video montages, or will TDV be branching out into other projects?
Caitlin: We've always treated the short (2-4 minute) films we've done as experiments really - like I say, trying to develop a style that hopefully will evolve as we go on, so although those things are fun to make they tend to be products of the two of us sat round a kitchen table going "Ummmm what shall we write a film about?" "Err I dunno, but this cup of tea sure is photogenic and would look good being made to an Indie pop background"! It's an off-the-cuff trial for what we really want to do which are short, scripted films made with our friends and the best resources we can come up with, so yeah, they're a laugh and quite simple to make these montages but we want to stretch ourselves a bit more in the future.
ParTea.
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Sean: What projects are currently in the pipeline?
Caitlin: Our work-in-progress is a short based on a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky called Bobok, which is a tale of a Russian scamp in the
19th century who goes to a funeral and begins to overhear this tragi-comic dialogue coming from the graves. We both read it and had almost the same ideas about how it should look which we thought was a good indication of being on to a good thing, and the subject matter's brilliant for a first attempt - dramatic but the story doesn't draw too many conclusions from it and we want to leave our audience's a bit puzzled so to have them thinking about death is going for the jugular but equally, it should be a good challenge.
Feet to the Beat
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Sean: That sounds pretty cool. How do the two of you work together, is the work shared equally or do you delegate tasks to each other?
Caitlin: Georgie is the infinitely more experienced film maker so she really started the whole thing off while I jumped about going "Yeah! Brilliant! Let's do that!" but she's given me some expert editing tuition so it's become a shared task the whole way through now really. In theory, I take care of the things that are more drama related because that's the area I've had the experience in with bits of theatre work etc and Georgie deals with the complicated film making stuff, but at the end of the day we just shoot with a handycam and edit with moviemaker, so it's a fairly easy task. For the Bobok project Georgie's doing first draft of script and I'm doing 'casting' right now, but I'm pretty sure we'll end up merging everything together - there's not much we think differently on, worryingly…
Sean: So who would you say were your influences as filmmakers?
Caitlin: I think Michel Gondry is the big one really. That kind of updated, humorous surrealism is what we aim for - something that's brilliant to look at in the same way as an accidentally good photo is and makes it hard to tell the difference between what's intentional art and what's chance. There's a lot of fun to be had with those kinds of films if you can create a story to match it.
Paper Daisy
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Sean: So where do you see TDV in the future?
Caitlin: Well I can’t say we’ve made any long term pacts to be honest, but for as long as we’re both happy making films together that’s what we’ll both be doing. In terms of future work, we’re still only a few months old and finding our feet, so one step at a time – but hopefully we’ll be producing ever more ambitious projects and we’d like to start using some official channels for funding and finally, just (like everyone) reaching a much bigger audience and getting ourselves known.
Sean: Finally, some quickfire questions, first off, and I hate asking this cause I wouldn’t have an answer, what’s your favourite film?
Caitlin: Ouch, tough one. It changes almost weekly, but at this moment in time it’s Withnail & I. I am a true geek, yes.
Sean: Favourite theme tune?
Caitlin: Flagpole Sitta (Harvey Danger) from Peep Show. But favourite score…? Lord of the Rings always adds to the grandeur of the whole nine hour movie experience.
Sean: Favourite song?
Caitlin: This changes almost as much as the film, but today it’s Omaha by Tapes n Tapes.
Sean: Favourite cheese?
Caitlin: On behalf of Techno Disco Video, I would like to nominate Camembert as our Official Favourite Cheese.
Sean: Favourite colour?
Caitlin: A leafy green.
Techo Disco Videos first work can be seen at Techno Disco Video myspace and we’ll be keeping in contact regarding future work.
