Shifted Perceptions

Always on the lookout for something new on Super 8, it was with some intrigue that I read about ‘A Shift in Perception’, the latest film from Australian director Dan Monceaux. Described as a humanist documentary, this short film has already gathered a string of accolades and prizes, and is currently doing the rounds on the festival circuit.

So how did a Super 8 documentary cross over into the mainstream and make such an impact? I tracked down Dan Monceaux and got a viewing copy on DVD.

Upon watching, what is clearly apparent is that this is no ordinary short film, in fact it’s no ordinary kind of any film. What it is, is a 16-minute slice of documentary film oozing with visual poetry sparking off an air of true feel-good nostalgia.

Through the words of the Leander, Edna and Rhonda, three visually impaired women from South Australia, the film leads us into a rich illustration of their lives, dreams, fears and day to day observations. A ‘Shift in Perception’ is beautifully poetic whilst treating its subjects with due respect and grace through the careful choice and fine crafting of the associated imagery, music and soundscape.

Predominantly shot on black and white, the film employs a broad range of camera techniques to engage the imagination and cleverly illustrates the unique and rarely heard perspectives of its three, remarkable protagonists.

With Leander, Edna (right) and Rhonda's story still ringing in my ears, I caught up with director Dan Monceaux to ask him a few questions about what is a very special film and it’s clever use of Super 8.

What was the inspiration for the film and did you know Leander, Edna and Rhonda before starting?

No, they were introduced when we commenced pre-production. Leander, Rhonda and Edna had all volunteered to be a part of a Community Cultural Development Project in their local council area.

Working under the title of 'Living Dreams', the project was designed to give blind people in the Port Adelaide Enfield region (Adelaide, South Australia) a public voice through artwork. We entered the project several months after it was begun, met and developed friendships with the women, and turned their conversations into an illustrative and informal film.

Their observations are very open and revealing, how did you capture the dialogue, in particular the spirit behind their stories?

The spirit behind the stories was in the hearts and words of the three women right from our first meetings with them. The three ladies (aged between 55 and 85) were never guarded with their thoughts, memories and feelings, and after a few casual cups of tea and some giggles and chats, I identified some common ground between the material each woman wanted to share with us. Just enough to link the three women and create somewhat of a collective experience, without making it feel laboured. We recorded about 90 minutes of total dialogue in one-to-one conversation with each woman, when we felt we were ready.

Considering the way in which the film is structured, presumably the audio came first?

Audio came first, yes. The film was essentially an artist's illustrative response to the blind women's words, so in this sense it was a reactive process.

Audio for Super 8 is a perennial problem, what set up did you use?

Our audio was unusual. I used an old Realistic electret microphone (single AA battery powered) that I sat on a desktop stand during our conversations for the voice-over. The audio was recorded to minidisc, the dubbed to the computer and edited in Adobe Audition. The chats were then chopped into individual phrases, so that we could juggle them around in the pictorial editing process. I used the same set up to record a few other moments (pub noise, Leander playing her piece 'Reflections').

I also spent one afternoon with sound recordist Bryce Doudle, gathering some atmos of poker machines and the ocean. Our composer Alex Carpenter then used an old Fostex 8 track tape recorder, an acoustic guitar and some delay FX to create his mesmerising score... and then I created a few more foley FX myself (the clinking cans, the running water etc) in my home, straight to PC with a Rode NT3 condenser mic.

Did you have a visual aesthetic in mind when you embarked on the film and how much was this dictated by what you had heard?

The aesthetic was dictated by our decision to shoot on Super 8, and also by our respective backgrounds as artists, in animation and artistic photography. I had recently bought a range of second hand cameras (in 2005) that I had far from fully tested, so I was also hoping for some favourable, unexpected results.

As two of the ladies (Rhonda and Edna) had lost their sight progressively, we felt that this lent itself to an aesthetic of softness, imprecision and decay. Since Leander had never seen, her words suggested something of a dreamspace. The final aesthetic should read like a combination of the two.

What camera and filmstocks did you use and how did you arrange your workflow?

We used a range of cameras in the film, loaded with Kodak Tri-X and Kodachrome 40. Frame by frame animations, wide angle shots (via fisheye attachment) and some macro work was done with two Canon 514XLs. A Beaulieu 4008ZMII was used a variety of ways, across a variety of frame rates. A Canon 814 Autozoom proved a good all-rounder, while a Minolta 400XL proved the perfect camera to clamp onto a motorbike for a time-lapse dolly shot. We also used a GAF 1002 ST and another Chinon 555 XL Macro to shoot some time-lapse footage.

Our workflow began with an audio edit, from which we emerged with a few hundred lines of dialogue that we loosely grouped into sub-stories. From here we generated a shot list (we think through the cameras, so storyboards were unnecessary) which grew and contracted during production. We juggled cartridges between cameras, marking on the case how many feet remained on each, and marking this on masking tape on the camera body also. This worked quite well, although we did occasionally miscalculate, and run out of cartridge sooner than expected.

As cartridges were finished, they were sent to a lab interstate, and turned around painfully slowly. We DIY telecined in batches as they came back through a mirror-box unit (projector one end, camera the other) and dumped the footage directly into Adobe Premiere Pro 2. The colour footage was shot on Kodachrome, and we had to wait up to four weeks for that stuff to come back developed. Waiting up to three weeks turnaround for Tri-X though was unacceptable, and really messed with our scheduling.

We were in production from March to install in a gallery as a DVD projection in Adelaide, August 4th 2006. In our desperation, we actually hand-developed our second to last roll of Tri-X in Diafine chemistry, telecined it as negative and inverted it digitally, with interesting results.

Presumably the mix of black and white and colour was dictated by the subject matter - how important was this to you when shooting and selecting b&w and colour sections?

We had the last of our Kodachrome to burn and realised that selective colour would have great visual impact appearing amongst the black and white Tri-X footage. We used this to illustrate moments where the women's other senses were highly engaged... for example the fire and smoke that Leander is so afraid of and the bursts of colour when she talks about the smell of roses.

How did you undertake the editing process?

We used a Fujica projector with variable frame rate to minimise flicker in the telecine process and set our consumer video camera to a slightly longer exposure to capture the images. We then edited the footage on a Windows XP machine, running Adobe Premiere Pro 2. From there, we bounced the footage back to miniDV, and then on to Betacam SP for screening copies at a dubbing lab.

What made you choose Super 8 for this film?

I was fascinated by Super 8 when I first discovered a Bell & Howell camera in a cupboard at my parents' place in 1996. I was fifteen at the time (Dan is pictured right), bought a roll of K40 and made my first Super 8 animation. I didn't touch the format for years thereafter, until I discovered how versatile the higher end Super 8 cameras were. Since then, Emma (Emma Sterling, editor of the film) and I had between us studied photography, visual art, illustration and filmmaking, and the thinking and knowledge applied in 35mm photography was easily ported to the Super 8 format.

We believe video has its place and is wonderfully accessible and immediate... but Super 8 was a personal challenge that ultimately yielded a far more distinctive, appropriate and memorable aesthetic. For us as artists and for the subject of the documentary, it was an obvious choice.

What reactions have you had to the film?

The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive. We've submitted over 80 copies to festivals, and we've been delighted to have had the film picked up by some major festivals already. The first surprise was IDFA (International Documentary Film festival Amsterdam) where we screened five times, and we've just heard that we've won a prize at Black Maria Film & Video Festival, which has an extensive touring program across the USA and is an Academy Award nominating festival.

More importantly though, audiences have described the work as poetic, moving, beautiful, meditative... everything we hoped that it would be. It's been programmed to screen in the USA, Canada, Albania, the Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Israel and Australia so far, and to our delight the list keeps growing.

So, what's next?

Emma and I have found a fitting niche for ourselves, and we are looking forward to our next artistic documentary films. We're uncertain whether our next work will be exclusively Super 8 though... our interests are creeping towards 16mm filmmaking and video, in order to make our finished products more broadcaster-friendly. We share a keen interest in conservation and social issues, and have some interesting human stories to investigate in our local area relating to these.

The thing to remember is that what's local for the filmmaker is exotic to a world audience, so documentary filmmakers don't necessarily need huge budgets and wild locations to make interesting films. We shot ours on a AUS$400 stock and developing only budget, and made up the weight with our time, fuel and a lot of passion.

Hopefully this film's success will ease the financing of our next one... filmmaking is our passion and we'd like to maintain our devotion.


‘A Shift in Perception’ is a unique short film and beautifully illustrates the aesthetic qualities that Super 8 can bring to the documentary genre. If you get the chance to see the film on the big screen, I’d urge you to take the time out to do so. Otherwise DVD copies in both PAL and NTSC are available (prices from US$15) from the website at http://www.danimations.com.au/perception/ where full details of the latest international screenings are also listed.

Many thanks go to Dan Monceaux in the preparation of this article.

Giles Perkins