Exhibition introduction video
This artist talk video production features an interview with Suzanne Perlman discussing the background of some of her paintings. This film was produced to support Suzanne’s ‘Catching the Ephemeral’ 2018 Gallery exhibition featuring at the Dutch Centre in London. Working as a London based filmmaker, I produce, film and edit high-quality content for artists, creatives and businesses. In this case study, I explain the processes behind this production.
Filming an artist
The filming of Suzanne Perlman took place in her London studio as she was preparing some of her artworks to send to the Andrea Tardini Gallery in Venice for their exhibition during the 2017 Venice Biennale. Each of the artworks, to be featured in the Gallery’s exhibition, were placed on Suzanne’s easel for her to describe their origins whilst being filmed. Suzanne has a remarkable memory and recounted many beautiful stories about each painting and how she became inspired to paint each one. Working in close co-operation with Suzanne’s immediate family, I was able to film her talking about a few dozen of her paintings in one afternoon session.
Whole interview edit
After filming the studio footage, I edited together the whole interview into one timeline and added a timecode in-vision effect. This would help any future logging and enable precise timecodes to be sent to me for future editing. This complete version with timecode was then sent to the family so that they could decide which excerpts to use for the Instagram videos.
Editing Instagram videos
In the coming weeks, I was sent a script listing the short 60-second videos to be edited for Suzanne’s Instagram channel. So that a ‘style’ could be agreed on I worked on the first one and sent that back and forth until a style was agreed. Each video was to start with an artwork and then mix through to Suzanne talking about that painting. Each video then closed with the same opening frame so that they all loop played smoothly. It was also decided to add subtitles to each one so that these could be more easily understood by a range of people in a range of situations or environments.
Exhibition film editing
After delivering 20 short videos, I was later also commissioned to edit a longer introduction video for display at another exhibition of Suzanne’s paintings entitled ‘Catching the Ephemeral’ that was to take place at the Dutch Centre in London during 2018. This 18-minute film was created using the same timecode logging process as the shorter examples. High-resolution still images of each featured artwork were also edited in to help illustrate Suzanne’s descriptive dialogue. I also added slow moves onto the still photographs for visual interest. The longer film was subtitled with plain white text over a thin black transparency. This enabled all the text to be easily read by visitors to the Gallery. The completed film was played on a large LCD screen in a separate space in the gallery so that people could hear Suzanne describing some of her artworks created in Curacao, New York and London.
Artist talk video production
It was a joy to spend time filming Suzanne and to hear all of her stories around her paintings and full, eventful life. Hearing the background behind each artwork brings them to life in a very meaningful way. This artist talk video production and all the short Instagram videos help Suzanne promote her artworks to a much wider audience in an interesting and engaging way.
If you would like any help with your artist talk video production, please get in touch.
