Trims (working title) slates 19-147

This is a project recreating the residue of film editing, film foootage called a “trim reel”.

In the past, film cameras shot rolls of negative, and from those negatives a print was made – which was then cut up and a few selected pieces joined at will, to produce the “cutting copy”, the desirable form of the film.

What remained would be stored as reels of joined up discards, the ‘trims’. These were the rejected or unused takes, as well as the discarded tops and tails of the parts of shots that had been selected for the cutting copy. Here might be found the bad takes, the clapper boards used to identify shots, snatches of overheard director instructions, glimpses of crew, shots with microphones in view and so on. This is what cinema does not want, all that is worthless. But these trims are the mirror of the edited film, a negative cast of the perfection of the cutting copy. The one implies the other, necessairly so.

This project seeks to foreground the absent, the missing. From its cavities we might guess at the lost object.

The film script made use of here is that of an unmade film, written some years ago but never realised, which deals with the first moments alone after a funeral, as endured by a widower. It was to be a tale about someone who was not present. This film consists of some of the material that would have been needed, with selected prtions removed. It is the trim reel. That which is absent might well be deduced, if anyone were to look.

I offer this as a memorial to Chantal Akerman who is not now present, after her sudden death in 2015.

Filmed in 2015, edited 2016.

concept/script/direction/edit:  Adam Roberts

director of photography:  Elly Nakajima

camera assistant:  Eve Marguerite

location sound:  Keifer Taylor

art direction:  Maria Shrigley

music credits:

hepard–risset glissando, illustration programmed by gloumouth1. Thanks to gloumouth1@gmail.com, creative commons license.

other tracks: www.bensound.com, creative commons license.