RAW FOOTAGE [Part Four]
Greg’s mourners fall into two very distinct categories. There are those with photographs and memories – in other words, everyone else – and then there are those with raw footage – me.
Take Rita Harvey, for instance. She’s nothing short of bonkers. She was never really particularly stable, but Greg’s death brought a lot of the craziness to a head. She, being of the photographs and memories kind of mourner, has a pictorial tribute to Greg. Since he died, it’s become cancerous. What was once just a relatively unsettling feature wall in her bedroom has spread down the left side of the hall, and now threatens the living room.
Guided tours are compulsory. Unsuspecting house guests, from family members to door-to-door Jehovah’s Witnesses, are led through the collection, with the contexts of each photograph narrated by an over-excited Rita.
After what’s felt like the hundredth photograph, I try to weasel my way out of it with a, “I really just came over for that DVD you borrowed, Rita, I –”
“This –” a neighbourhood of dogs twitch their ears “– one’s us down at the beach. He is so funny.” She still opts for the present tense. Special people like Rita Harvey don’t understand that wherever cremation takes you, there’s no coming back. Bless.
“Really, I had better get going. That DVD –”
“You can tell how close we are, look at how he’s huggin’ me.”
Resistance is futile. I suck it up and actually look at the photo she’s talking about. But I don’t see how he’s huggin’ her. He’s noticeably blurred. She looks surprised in the photo.
“He looks like he’s tackling you,” I offer bluntly. “Or push you down, or –”
“No!” A neighbourhood of dogs commit suicide en masse.
Despite the loudness of her protestation, her body doesn’t believe it. Her eyebrows slip. The ends of her smile sag. Her shoulders drop. And I’ve run out of synonyms for ‘fall’. Luckily for me, she blinks it off and pulls herself back up to her full, albeit unimpressive, height. She’s recomposed. Her laugh is an uneasy one. She’s smiling again, stronger than before, almost as if she’s begging me to contest what’s coming next…
“No, silly, that’s just a trick of the light,” she justifies.
And that’s the thing that separates the mourners with photographs and memories, and mourners like me, with raw footage. Rita can account for the blurs in her photograph. Nobody’ll bother questioning her poor excuses. I mean, she was there when it was taken, after all. As she conducts her guided tours, she has control over what we see in the photographs she displays, and anything she doesn’t like is simply a trick of the light…
But my raw footage… my raw footage speaks for itself, literally. What separates a film from photography isn’t the rapid succession of images, but the addition of sound. While a picture might be worth a thousand words, a movie says, and sometimes screams, a million.
Admiring Rita’s collection, fifty-odd grinning Gregs eyeing you, you’d assume he was happy. The evidence is there, there are fifty-odd grinning Gregs, not fifty-odd frowning or mildly-interested Gregs. They’re definitely grinning, and who’d grin if they’re unhappy?
Forget that every time we take a photo, we’re asked to pose, asked to smile. We’re all actors, fakers, and our photo albums are filled with staged snapshots of reality.
And you can say what you want about something that doesn’t talk back. We were best friends, you can say. We were best friends.
“We were best friends,” Rita adds, stroking the photo frame.
She has her photographs, and I have truth.
An illusion of truth, I keep having to remind myself. Illusion. They aren’t even moving, really, it’s all just a trick at twenty-five frames a second. I don’t see Greg, I see twenty-five samples in each second. Within a box. Stripped of context. But it’s hard to remind myself that it’s just a seven-hour sample of several months. There were other times. There were. Good times. But my head has pushed the memories out. This is all I have left. I have no photographs.
As Greg approaches sainthood in Rita’s mind, in mine, his vices are becoming all the more clear.
The footage says our friendship was a failure, and no memory can prove otherwise. I can’t conjure up an image in my mind to combat that of my 2004 self, drained, staring down the lens of the camera, muttering a feeble, defeated, “I guess it’s just you and me now.”
Mum knocks on my bedroom door. I minimise the program windows as she lets herself in.
“You still up?” she whispers, even though she’s looking right at me, sitting at my desk.
“I think so.”
“Look at what I found when I was cleaning out my drawers.” She approaches, an issue of the school’s half-yearly magazine in her hand. She holds it out. She’s opened it up to the coverage of the 2004 Film Festival. The page is filled with photographs. One grabs my gaze.
2004. Perspective finishes. The credits roll. Nobody claps.
“Photo for the school magazine?” someone asks.
I don’t reply. Greg laughs and throws his arm around me. “Heck yes, I want to remember this moment for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t rub it in, come on.”
“Give us a big smile,” the kid with the camera says.
“Yeah, Jason, a hella big one.”
“Ready? Okay… on three… One… two…”
The flash goes off. A sample of the light pattern that bounces off us is taken, and immediately broken down into a series of pixel values. In English, a photo is taken, and we’re immortalised.
There, looking out at the world from his glossy-papered prison, is Greg, with his arm around my shoulder. We’re grinning idiots. Carefree. I feel warm. I feel like I know one thing for certain.
We were best friends. We were best friends.
Mum leaves me with the magazine. She shuts the door, and I give her time to get back to her bedroom before I attack the page with a pair of scissors. I snatch up the closest photo frame and wrench off the back.
If it’s good enough for Rita, it’s good enough for me.
I load the footage into the video editing program. It takes me a sec to find the segment that I want.
Greg’s sitting centre-frame. “Aw. You know I love you, Jason.” He smiles.
“Well, I –”
“Gotcha! I mean, the script, is it the best you’re capable of? Not even a make-out scene? I know this girl, Rita, insanely –”
I pause the footage. I highlight the video timeline I want to work with and copy it into a new project. I’m clicking the mouse frantically, dragging small snippets over to and dropping them into the trashcan icon. I rearrange the pieces, copying some, until –
I click play.
“Aw. You know I love you, Jason. – You’re – the best. – The best.”
I save the alterations.
“Aw. You know I love you, Jason. – You’re – the best. – The best.”
I dump the original Mini-DV tapes in a bin on the way into school.
“Aw. You know I love you, Jason.”
His arm around my shoulder, Greg and I smile within a cheap frame, planted by my computer screen.
“You’re – the best. – The best.”
END
Adelaide 2:03 pm on November 11, 2009 Permalink |
Enjoyed reading your “fitness first” article on RaRaCurio. The pictures were good too. Some of the fellow writers are exceptional. And loved your irony as usual!
New Years’ resolution: buy Lola.
William Kostakis 9:05 pm on November 12, 2009 Permalink |
glad you liked it ^_^ why have it as a new years resolution when you can have it as the presie you buy EVERYONE for xmas?