Collaboration
What Happens Between the Stills
During two days in Frank Widemann's studio, we made motion pieces alongside the photography for SOULS and LENI. We worked with the same setups and watched the seconds around each photograph.
The light and direction were already there. We joined the photo production and looked for movement within it: a hand adjusting fabric, the wait for another frame, a pose being released.
Those were small things, but they gave us enough to film. We wanted the motion to feel at home beside Frank's photographs, so we stayed close to what was happening on set.
Making film inside a stills shoot means paying attention to someone else's timing. There are moments when the photograph needs concentration and others when a reset gives you something to follow.
For SOULS, those intervals became part of the material. A gesture could begin before the pose and continue after it. In the edit, we could keep that movement intact.
With LENI, we worked from the same starting point: use the existing light, follow the direction and find the movement within the session. Keeping the films close to the photography mattered more than adding another visual setup.
A reset can be a scene of its own.
The final pieces keep some of the time that a photograph leaves out. We like seeing them beside the stills, where the same session can be read at two different speeds.