Phantasmagoria Productions

Two experimental films I shot, a combination of needing to shoot something--anything, honing some skills and trying different techniques. I've got about three more shot but I just haven't edited them yet.

Experiment #1 was shot around 2007-8, using some of the trees that had fallen from hurricane Rita, which hit central Louisiana a bit after hurricane Katrina. The woods are probably still filled with fallen trees and huge divots as if giants had played golf here, giants who weren't very good at it anyway. I had just started teaching and was trying to figure out ways of reaching students who didn't like or understand poetry, which I myself did not entirely like or understand either. But Youtube was filled with either poetry recitations, some of which were useful, or just lyrics edited into a black screen. These are in a way video poems, but they're not anything I could put down on paper, yet they're certainly not long-form narrative either.

Experiment #2 was shot around the same time. I had been looking for a place in the fall of 2006 and happened upon this location under different and slightly bizarre circumstances. I came upon this house exactly as I did in this flick, but they were clearing brush by burning, so what I saw was this Lovecraftian scene via the--I believe the term is--"blasted heath" found in "The Colour Out of Space," though that may not be the right story. In other words I saw a blackened land still smouldering and this same odd white house alone and uninhabited. Very strange. I still try to keep a camera with me just in case, so I can someday capture that original scene, which would have quite a different effect. Also, I shot this in my left hand out of my car window and the car is a stick shift so I was shifting with the other hand. It was fun to shoot that way and challenging but it is a bit shaky.