:04:01
there was an enormous amount
of experimentation with film making
:04:05
and here is one example
of the kind of thing
:04:07
that he would have learned,
I think, in those silent days.
:04:12
Instead of doing
a very complicated optical,
:04:16
as we would call it today,
:04:18
where you take two pieces of film,
shot on different occasions,
:04:22
and then superimpose them
over each other,
:04:25
I'm pretty sure
this is one of the sequences
:04:27
that he told me
he actually did in the camera.
:04:30
Imagine how difficult this is:
First he filmed Niall MacGinnis,
:04:36
standing in position,
almost reacting
:04:39
to the people who are going by him
:04:41
and he probably exposed that
at about 50%.
:04:44
Then the film was rolled back
in the camera to...
:04:47
They would have noted
how long that shot was
:04:50
and rolled the film
back in the camera
:04:52
and started exposing the sequence
:04:55
of the members of the island
long-departed passing past him.
:05:00
And it's an incredibly
beautiful image
:05:03
and extremely difficult to achieve.
:05:06
You have to have forethought
and know how to frame things
:05:11
and how to tell the actors how to
look, where their eyeline should be.
:05:14
Eyeline is very important in movies.
:05:16
Not something audiences think about,
:05:18
but for a director it's very
important where the actor is looking.
:05:22
And they, of course, are looking
at Niall MacGinnis
:05:25
and reacting to him as he is reacting
to them in his memories.
:05:34
The film is really a poem
about an island.
:05:42
Here, a beautiful poetic moment.
:05:44
At the bottom of this gravestone,
the very evocative words:
:05:48
"Gone over."
:05:49
Kind of thing you would never see
in probably any other cemetery.
:05:53
Look at this image.
:05:55
I mean, you have no idea
how difficult it is
:05:58
to get a camera into position
to take shots like this