3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWA3_1i6XKE

(this is the first of a few posts in which I will be writing about the films I've made, in a play by play way. I wanted from the start for these films to be open-ended, asking questions and squirming, mostly, away from rigid plot. I wanted to value accident/chance and instinct in filming, with my loose ideas for direction and none for result, later composing the 'finished' film with structures and results, of a kind, in mind.)

 (demo)

The first section, 3 (demo), was the product of my first revisit to Winchester. The music is Jai Paul’s Jasmine (Demo). The song’s ‘unfinished’ aspect inspired me to approach a session of filming from the same angle: the notion of ‘finish’ was still so unappealling to me after Florence that I felt inclined to the feel of more immediate, lower picture quality, shots. We hadn’t a tripod, and so there is the slight shake that continues to be present throughout most of my films (or at least until December 2013, when I was given one for Christmas... thanks bruvva). In relation to the ‘amateur’ label that I long to be confined by, but have to acknowledge, the shake of the camera, in rhythm with the holder’s breath, feels more suited to the style I acquired.

 Ultimately, the (demo) section has become intentionally pixilated; partly inspired by seeing Kurosawa Akira’s use of weather, especially fog in Kumonosu-jo (Throne of Blood) (the (edit)’s overexposure echoes the confusing placement of the sun in Rashomon). In that film, fog indirectly suggests the characters’ moral ambiguity and deceit. I sought to consciously use the heaviness of the grey weather to convey the seemingly ambiguous nature of the section’s characters’ feelings.

It begins with an alternating shot between Sandy ‘asleep’ on a bench and Tom leaping down from a sealed doorway. The latter was the first shot filmed, and was meant to be where the disappearing Tom appeared. This idea both serves as the main link to Who and went on to form one of the key themes of (demo): the idea of an underlying strangeness, as if having found a familiar place unfamiliar (as I thought I would when returning to Winchester).

The shot of sleep was the last to be filmed on that day, and it forms a key moment in the (demo) section’s minimal ‘plot’ through its hint of dreaming. The reality of the section’s events, carrying on from Who and Tom’s disappearance, is brought into question, along with its objectivity; I strongly pursued the idea of various viewpoints changing with different characters – one of the reasons for the repetition of certain shots, or events.

 One of the layers of (demo), directly linked to the ‘dreaming’ Sandy and the ‘evil’ Tom, is that the characters are ghosts of a kind. They have not deceased, but they haunt the city as if in a dream, or a vivid memory; at no point do the characters move anything (apart from the shopping bag in the ‘real’ sections of the sleeping Sandy and evil Tom, though it does not move as if fused to them (rather like emotional baggage)), or interact with any person, except for one, who will be revealed later.

In (demo), walking (and what it says about the walker) is important, and the rhythm of the character’s mood is often somehow reflected in it. A predictable concern with ‘coolness’ and self-consciousness pervades these films, but perhaps the most in (demo). It is fitting therefore that the film truly begins with Sandy walking down the nave of Winchester’s cathedral (the longest in Europe, I have been repeatedly told), in time to the undulating bass of Jasmine.

The choice of the cathedral as a shooting location was purely in the moment, though I considered the comparison between church scenes and the neoclassical setting of Who’s end section relevant to the larger theme of, perhaps in the process of trying to find yourself, wanting to seem cultured, or solemn. The shot of the approaching figure, composed in a three (pew-nave-pew), felt to me like a kind of expectation, in keeping with the song’s fade-in. Yet, as the pixel-fog reveals the figure’s face, it cuts to Tom walking through a doorway and ascending a staircase, an echo of the preceding action of entering.

The quick cut to Sandy peering into a window contrasts the open act of walking (through a passage, door or stairway) with the more closed, secretive act of seeing (without being seen). Initially ad-libbed, I included the shots as an indicator for each character’s curiosity (as Tom does the same later), implying their search for something, and to echo the camera’s (voyeuristic/relexive) presence.

Sandy walks away from the door of a church, which originally was intended to serve as a joke, assuming he leaves the cathedral through this relatively tiny, different door. While now not as obvious as that, the ‘meanwhile’, in the film’s logic, that could be interpreted to have taken place still shows a Sandy who was in the cathedral outside a clearly different church. To add a sense of slightly forced ‘dramatics’, initially, Sandy walks to the camera, looks to the right in a sense of surprise, puts his head down as if disappointed, and then walks out of shot. I was pleased to, as I later did with re-appropriating similar moments from The Oil Man, Sugar (in でも), be able to add another layer of meaning, that of self-criticism, a kind of internal dialogue. By doing so, the fourth wall is broken (perhaps by a few bricks only, though acknowledged nonetheless) and a layer of humour is added, one that seems to be either immediate or not there at all, depending on who you are at the time.

This particular ‘self-critical’ shot is preceded by a quick clip of Tom about to jump down from the sealed doorway of the beginning. The ‘filmness’ of the film revealed, the audience familiar with Who can continue to believe that while these characters are, ultimately, characters, they are being played by the same people (in every sense) as the previous two films. In (edit) and (でも), the self-reference becomes central, along with the very idea of making a film. However, the fictionally presented elements first shown in (demo) serve as background, emotional context and the idea that this is a constructed, not a documentary, approach. In response to the abrupt revealing of the scaffolding of the film, the Sandy turns in shock. A particular stairway motif first appears next and Tom (again, ad-libbing when we were shooting) acts as the ‘evil’ Tom of Who, in part suggested through his ‘magically’ teleporting (again, indirectly drawing attention to the process). A suspicious chuckle later, the nature of the film’s reality is questioned by the ‘glitching’ of Tom’s grin. This technique, introduced to me through YTPs, is digital and therefore artificial, though I intend to serve here in the place of the sensation of a vision. 

This ‘evil’ Tom was dubious (in many senses) since his introduction in Who, but, in the same vein as watching something repeatedly in order to see something missed, this fast repetition is supposed to instil further doubt by displacing the flow, or credibility, of the film as a sequence of events in chronological order. During the glitch, there is a brief shot of the empty nave, where Sandy was. This harking back to the start of the section implies the retracing of steps (like Washizu and Miki in the fog in Kumonosu-jo); the audience having reached no conclusive meaning from the preceding scenes, we must start again, like the characters.

Immediately after the stairway scene, the self-referential Sandy looks down, in time with the vocals coming into the song. This extra layer implies the serious, fictionalised Sandy being disappointed with Tom’s ‘evil’ aspect, his buffoonery or Sandy not having found the fruition he (and perhaps the audience) had hoped for.

The importance of location is introduced with the shot of Tom overlooking Winchester. The cathedral is in view, implying the distance between the urban space and the greener suburbs of the city. This contrast is taken further in the following shot of Sandy walking onto a closed section of road, in the town. An audience familiar with Winchester might notice this closed road is near to the cathedral; by the sound of the wind against the subsequent silence, I wanted to take the contrast between the general and the specific further.

The interruption with a brief shot of Tom standing at the foot of another stairway, in the leafier part of town, continues in feel from his last shot, and its position suggests it could be either a memory of Sandy’s or a ‘meanwhile’ shot. The previously seen church door reappears, though with nobody before it, continuing a feeling of time having passed; again, could this be a memory of Sandy’s? Does Tom stand looking at the door? As the audience, are we simply gaining an objective view from the camera, like a pillow shot in Ozu Yasujiro’s films?

Like some of Ozu Yasujiro’s unpeopled shots, I intended to create a very loose/flexible symbolic system, determined by the audience’s perceptions of the visual components. The shot of the empty (small church's) doorway for example, presents it as lacking, due to the repeated shots of Sandy in front of it so far, and therefore as negative (space). Its meaning is defined by its association, much like Winchester, for me, and so this (somewhat tenuous) link (the symbol of a doorway) connects to the following shot, where the narrative focus shifts to Tom, standing before a doorway. Due to Tom’s ‘reappearance’, the doorway motif carries significance, and this shot presents another turn in events: Tom decides which way to walk, his decision seemingly informed by the flash-forward/back of his looking in the window, which contrasts his closed mind (ambiguous decisionmaking/thought) and open action (walking) with an open/clear mind (curiosity, investigation) and a closed/secretive action (spying). Whilst shooting, I suggested Tom walk towards the columns so that there would be more room for links between that and shots in the cathedral. However, although the architecture might seem the most prominent link to the next shot, of the vacuuming man, the reason I placed these together was the idea of the 'mundane' being placed against the ‘interesting’ (in a crescendo to the section’s centrepiece). The man, who was unaware of the camera, seemed almost surreal in the environment, and I aimed to use the sound of the vacuum cleaner to contrast with the following silence and ‘calm’ of the scene of Sandy asleep on the bench, in its fullest.

This scene’s significance is fullest when seen as a kind of self-parody: as mentioned, the concern with a sense of correctness (particularly coolness in this film) dogged me especially during the six months before making this film, propelled strongly by my experience at the Florence Academy of Art. The image of the single Artist figure, while not without its charms and importance, reeks to me of alazonic affectation. The Sandy asleep on the bench can be seen as an image of that, a kind of cliche, and if one analyses it in a limited, natural, way, with the cliche in mind, there seem to be no alternatives (yet). Thus another symbol (like the empty door) is indirectly established.

The ‘centrepiece’ is so called because of its place in the film and its succinct expression of an important element, reflects some of my feelings on my return to England from Italy. One of my favourite aspects of James Joyce's Ulysses is the near missing that occurs between the two lead characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom. When they eventually do meet properly, some call it something of a(n) (anti)climax, as they are both tired and Stephen is drunk (at first). Throughout the day the novel is set on, there is natural expectation that these strangers will see one another, through various connections and a shared space (and, naturally, timeframe). Yet in this film, the characters (can) know each other (the interpretation of Tom and Sandy as real people making a film, and as the fictionalised actors in the film(s)), but there is the possibility, as in Ulysses, that they do not meet. There is no scene of the real/fictional Sandy or Tom together since The Oil Man, Sugar (unless you include the brief breaking of the fourth wall in the self-conscious Who), which is still no guarantee of their acquaintance in this or any film, due to the lack of Sandy/The Oil Man's presence in Who, a film potentially about the former's aftermath.

Therefore, it is more frustrating and, perhaps, confusing, that Tom and Sandy are never together in (demo), as characters. The overlapping in the centrepiece, of Sandy walking away from the camera and Tom towards it, is suggestive of their similarities, even if just in their shared action of spying through the window and walking down the same alleyway. Tom’s pausing after his peek indicates, perhaps the passage of time, by suggestion that whatever is inside the window is of a more thought-provoking nature than when Sandy looks (and suggesting a wider time gap than one may initially think), or perhaps a difference between their character(s), due to Sandy’s not stopping. This section, over the chorus of Jasmine, is the somewhat linked to the lyrics that play with it, with the lines sounding something “melt my heart of stone, babe/ make my dream(s) come true…”. Rendered ambiguous by Jai Paul’s treatment of his vocals, the open-ended feel echoes, of course, the film. I encourage  speculation; perhaps someone is/was in the window, or the alley holds a certain significance for at least one of the characters?

Returning to the theme of haunting, the characters’ ghostly aspects are shown most clearly in the centrepiece: the glitches reassert the narrative’s dubious qualities, whilst doing so in a manner fitting the medium of digitally-edited film. The abstraction of the film’s ‘surface’ expresses a breakdown of established ‘movieness’, or of the authority of a linear plot, as with Tom's earlier glitch. In another sense, linearity is played with by the flashing (forward, back and side) to other places and times, such as the revealing of another location within the cathedral (that Sandy later (in the film) walks through), or reverting to the staircase in the trees, though, in each case, without their defining figures.

 This leads back to the image of Tom gazing out over the city, and then to the road (previously seen without cars), with the music’s change from chorus to verse serving as kind of a structural guide. If the verse is the context for the chorus, or the lead-up/comedown to/from its climax, then this shot is a wider view of an event we have already seen, shown to be working in a similar way to the musical analogy. To fit in with the notion of chorus returning to verse, we have now moved from the unreal centrepiece (climax) (seemingly) back to the 'verse' of before, with Tom, alone, as before. The cars, which move in time to the music, hint at a kind of otherness previously unseen in the film (just think of what a car means/implies to you), though they speed past with such detachment that they only further emphasise distance, perhaps the distance between Tom and Sandy and/or their (imaginary) goal(s). 

The device of revisiting a previously empty scene in a fuller way is employed with Sandy walking past the vacuum cleaning man, who, blocked from view, is represented only by his jarring sound.

A cropped version of the earlier shot of Tom could/might hint at access to his mind’s eye, as he looks in the direction of the cathedral, represented by another cropped shot (of the west window). 

This is subverted by the shot turning to the right, in a playful moment intended to both obscure this idea of Tom’s definite vision and imply that it is imagined by Tom, who then, a moment’s thought later, decides to ascend the staircase and disappear from view, though back in the uncropped, distant view of before.

To balance the ‘insight’ into Tom’s mind, the distant shot of Sandy travelling down the closed road can establish a more tangible ‘meanwhile’ to Tom’s ascension to the woods.

 

 A direct cut to Sandy in the wing of the cathedral reveals further information about the previously shown shot, the 'information' that, from a traditional narrative perspective, defines the scene. The direct transition to the (repeated) scene of Sandy walking from a church door seems to give the same joke-illusion as before, through the camera following this same character, that of these events occurring sequentially and leading to another self-referential crisis.

Looking away as before (echoing the recurring shot of Tom overlooking the city), Sandy can be seen to be seeming to imagine, or see, the empty doorway/staircase that Tom ascended at the film’s beginning. However, this time Sandy’s voice saying “go” is heard, once again drawing attention to the ‘filmness’ and, subsequently, sending Sandy into a repeating glitch of his shaking head.

 I wanted to, in some way to defy my own expectations of a film, and draw no truly conclusive moment in the (demo). The empty shot of the ‘road closed’ sign serves as a kind of indicator or, maybe, sign: for the mind of the fictional Sandy, of the lack of direction I felt when making it and, I imagine, of the audience's experience. Furthermore, the appearance of Tom on the steps, after Sandy has walked away from the church door, has the sense of a frustrating near miss, a jeer at the audience. The ‘evil’ Tom and the ‘dreaming’ Sandy reappear, as the section begins to transition to the (edit) section.

When I divided the sections into separate videos, the shot of Sandy walking past the vacuum cleaner served as the (non-) conclusion. Due to the lingering shot of him, in the continuous version (r3dux), there is an extra awkwardness to the sense of expectation for the vacuum-cleaning man, who so far has been a background character to Sandy and Tom’s main roles. Here, Sandy having gone, we see life going on, and this change is important in the shift of tone from (demo) to (edit), which, to put it kinda briefly, is the movement from ceaselessly searching to questioning whether the ‘something’ being searched for has actually been already found and, if it has been, if it really is ‘it’. As 3 goes on there is a gradual shift from a 3^rd-person view with subjective inflections to a 1^st-person view with objective inflections.

‘It’ is shown to seem be the recurring view of the summery leaves and sky, which, now that the film is openly self-conscious, frustrates Sandy, and causes him to disappear. This trick of disappearing, again, refers to the end of Who, and, like that story, occurs from a sense of self-absorption, where one’s narcissistic tendencies or over-introspection can see them withdraw from the outside world. 

Followed by the return of the structural aid of Tom looking over the city, the theme of the unattainable, abstract goal continues from Sandy to Tom, who seems to present a view of a high part of the cathedral’s edifice (which, like the summery leaf shot, is key to the (edit) section). However, the very quick (0.01/2 of a second) shots of the now empty bench which Sandy ‘dreamt’ turns the narrative once again away from this conclusive line of thought, and shows, through quick cutting, the difficulty of precisely defining a thought and its perimeters.

The shots of the empty bench are interspersed with those of ‘dreaming’ Sandy, and, by the editing (including the significant pauses), a vision (as in the centrepiece of (demo)) of the vision-making dreamer. This reflexiveness, like the increasing attention to introspection, is a shift of focus across the three sections; the (demo) looks desperately outwards for another (and for 'it'), while the (edit) looks outward while (half-) questioning and presenting the possibility of introspection, which the final part (and, really, all the parts) are ruled by. 

The flash-forward to the location of the でも section’s  parody of the (demo)'s centerpiece tells of the things to come, and is something I added with the idea of this place waiting, empty, for its time to come on stage.

A significant detail in Sandy’s walking past the vacuum cleaning man is their mutual acknowledgment. This is the first interaction, within the film’s presentational aspect, between two characters, and so this fact, leading into the somewhat more real (edit), allowed me to include direct access into Sandy’s (my) mind: he remembers the bench, a street filmed in Who and the staircase Tom ascends, ‘evilly’. 

This acts as a bridge between Sandy and Tom, as we then see Tom by the road, deciding to ascend, and with this movement there is the graphic match to a new shot, that of Tom standing in the light at the end of an alleyway.

(edit)

This section, excluding the moments already seen in (demo) (which have become noticeably less pixilated) was shot in the last days of May 2013, in Winchester and in the countryside between Winchester and Stockbridge. In contrast to the earlier shoot, I had a clearer vision of my goal, having made (demo), and so the process was both freer and, fittingly, self-aware; you cannot regain innocence. If pixilation is the visual constraint of the (demo), then overexposure is that of the (edit): this symbolises the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, and as a word-based, abstract reference, it fails to really be that literal thing that it describes. In scenes around Winchester, Tom walks through large white spaces, as if, beyond the tunnel, there is nothing but blinding light; this reflects the possible doubt in any solution, conclusion or result, and in the idea of finality and finish. This doubt asserts itself here through self-reference/ nostalgia, a larger timescale/setting, a greater attention to words, (longer) interruptions, and an increase in acted melancholy/acting and self-deprecation. 

The (edit) begins with the first moving shot in 3, the shaking, unclear (through overexposure) vision of Tom at the end of the passageway. The motif of the telephone is introduced with the previously unseen Sam. There is another deliberate pairing of song lyrics and action onscreen: as Jai Paul says “make my dream(s) come true”, Sam, mouth out of sight, could be calling Tom. Interspersed is a shot of the bench Sandy dreams on, still empty; this movement is that of time continuing, with Sandy having gone. It is now presented, largely through his absence on camera, that he is making the film, as opposed to it being suggested (as in (demo)) through smaller hints.

As we near Tom, who still does not interact with the passers-by, we nearly gain contact, either between him and Sandy (as filmmaker) or him and the audience (perhaps through a communicative look). The reappearance of the disappointed, reflexive Sandy outside the church, however, predicts disappointment and, as frustratingly, is disappointingly correct: the action cuts away from Tom, the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ and the ‘inspired moment’ that Sandy the Filmmaker is looking for, though not before a very brief glimpse of the evening sun. The ‘inspired moment’, in disguise as this shot of the evening sun in Winchester, will reappear more fully later.

After this anticlimactic moment of being so close to communication, the section proper begins, after a glitching montage of Tom at the sealed portal he ‘appeared’ from, the main ‘action’ sequence of the (edit) (that of Tom walking across an overexposed path), and the archway from Who and The Oil Man, Sugar (reappearing for the first time). This montage is sandwiched between the opening shot of Tom answering his phone, implying its presentational/actedness nature, and for laughs.

The dog’s bored look was included to create a bored atmosphere, which explains Tom’s excited “yep” in his answering the phone. The everyday nature of this slice of fictitious Tom’s life in this section is partly to blame, shown by the vacuum-cleaning man from (demo) still being in the cathedral. In a moment matching the song’s lyrics (Sweet Talk by Jessie Ware, “I had to stay away from you”), a man actually runs from the ‘light’ back to the ‘tunnel’. 

After a cropped zoom, the man still cleans in the cathedral, posing the question whether this is an analogous memory or comparison from Sandy the Filmmaker (or something else entirely).

The ‘real’ Tom and the Tom within the film begin to be separated with a blurred shot of Tom pulling his lips into a ridiculous pose. As the camera gradually focuses, I intended to recreate the anticlimactic sense of disappointment I got from not achieving the exact ideas I had while shooting. 

The aimlessness of filming his face like this hints at the amateurism I am keenly aware of, and its suggestion of artistic frustration leads onto the main analogy of that, the shot of Tom seated at the piano. This piano also highlights the gap between creativity and the rendition of skill, along with the idea of rehearsal. This (edit) section is echoed later in the（でも）, as their general shapes are the same, in a kind of rehearsal.

In an effort to alleviate the boredom, from a very low angle, Tom attempts to pour out the non-existent remnants of his beer. This is interrupted by a memory (for the character, Tom or the Filmmaker) of the ‘evil’ Tom walking up the stairs in (demo). Again, this matches the wordy (verbose?), anxious nature of the section by adhering to the lyrics (“You can’t be here/ How long till you disappear?”), referencing Who and Tom’s disappearance (into himself). 

This is furthered by the flash of the archway where Tom feels nostalgia in Who, followed by even the ‘evil’ Tom disappearing, implying that, in the logic of Tom the Actor, he and/or the Filmmaker already doubt (demo)’s impact/memory. This brings into play the idea of Sandy the Filmmaker making something with (demo)’s reception in mind, and this will be expanded on.

After the interruption, and building of tension, Tom’s bottle proves disappointingly empty, as in Who, sending him into a sulk. However, the shock of his phone being called makes him alert, and the quick changes of angle and ‘repetitions’ reflect this. We, however, are not privy to the conversation, despite the overly dramatic reaction Tom gives. An analogy is then made (which, for openness, could also be the topic of conversation), between an all-seeing audience and an all-seeing Tom, with a repetition of his gazing over Winchester.

 If, in the (demo), Tom’s gazing emphasised his detachment from the city (and Sandy), then here it perhaps serves as a mislead for the audience: just as we feel something is about to happen, yet film takes a completely different path.

This diversion is, for me, one of the most important moments in 3. It is in the following shot, of the ridiculous face Tom pulled, and where the structure of ‘film as film’ vs. ‘film as reality’ is most clearly revealed. It is hinted at before, with the behind-camera speech in (demo), the internal dialogue shots of a cringing Sandy and with characters’ awareness of the camera. Here, however, the music itself ceases, as Sandy and Tom laugh, so much so that the camera moves away. With this, I feel the tone of the film 3 changes; now this film-reality tension is broken, the film can become something more personal, perhaps enabling the audience to make freer associations and clearer insight. This mirrors my own insight, as I became far more aware of what I intended to do, even whilst shooting

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The break is swiftly followed by three shots: one of Tom walking in an previously unseen area of Winchester (which is expanded on later, and so can be seen as a flash-forward/back), one of Sam’s dog (with a minute clip of his voice), which begins to add the element of country vs. city and of simultaneous events, and of Tom saying “danger” whilst an empty bottle, at the same table as before, is filmed. These three, future/past, present/future and, in the sense of the audience now-knowing Sandy and Tom are filming in Tom’s kitchen, past/present, can be seen as miniatures of the results of the earlier change in tone.

The first is the re-evaluation of Tom’s walking around Winchester. Previously, we see Tom as a melancholic at his piano compared, seemingly comically, to the vacuum-cleaning man in the cathedral. However the man in the cathedral, when he parts to make way for Sandy, is the first character to make a connection in 3, and similarly, when Tom and Sandy have made a connection, via the camera and, in the film logic, via the telephone call, we are presented with two options for Tom’s walking down the white, overexposed path and for the rest of the film: is he going to now be a ‘real’ person, or continue being a ghost (as he was in (demo) and Who)? Will the real or ‘evil’ Tom ultimately win his internal struggle?

The hints in the shot (complete with a Kamakura-esque wooden fence on the left side of the composition) are comic, and supposed to reveal little as to the results of Tom’s internal struggle: Tom walks in the ‘light’ (which his trousers match), with the ‘tunnel’ nowhere to be seen. Although the struggle seems absent, we are still seeing Tom going about the same sort of daily business, in a seemingly uninteresting way. However, his gait is confident, and implies, with the faint background birdsong and appearance of a couple on the left of the frame, that Tom, while having left one ‘tunnel’, may yet see another, with another ‘light’ also, with the summer, communication and whatever that could lead to. As encouraging and, perhaps, disappointing (in terms of an action-driven plot) as this is, to the right meanwhile, a small dog is stropping the grass, in order to cover something it has found (or produced). This distraction, especially if one views a composition from one side to another, blends Tom into the scene, which, again, neither confirms nor denies his happiness.

The focus then leaves Tom, and Sandy (now established as the filmmaker and character) reappears, through a quickly alternating shot of the bench on which he ‘dreams’ in (demo). This motif of the abandoned bench will be developed further, though here it stands for the potential for Sandy, like Tom, to move on from his ‘dreaming’ self of (demo). However, interspersed with his ‘dreaming’ self, it implies that this is not yet happening. The subsequent shots of the train journey move into the 1^st person, through Sandy’s camera. Contextually, this was my travelling to Winchester in order to film with Tom and Sam. Travel formed a large part of my life over this time, and the implicated distance, which could not be expressed so clearly in the fogginess of (demo) and didn’t need to be in Who, is an essential part of understanding the way these films were formed, as I doubt they would be the way they are without the long periods of separation.

It is implied that Sandy’s filming seeks something less self-referential, as the self-deprecatory zoom into his reflection results in a reversion to the beginning of (demo), the operative ‘tunnel’. However, in contemplation (we can assume in this 1^st-person perspective) or filming, the ‘tunnel’ of leaves reveals its secret, which is that of colour.

This can be considered another key moment in 3 as a whole, as it is the first real glimpse of the ‘goal’, or true ‘light’. Previously seen as unsuccessful by Sandy (when in black and white) in the transition from (demo) to (edit), this ‘light’, unlike the stretched, worded metaphor of the overexposed ‘light’, is the light of true colour. This sensation is where words fall short, whereas ‘blinding’ aptly details that of the white.

Following the ‘realisation’ of the colourful leaves, the pace increases in a section which details the pursuing of what Sandy wants to film. It begins with reflexive, narcissistic shots: Sandy walking quickly on gravel whilst filming his shadow and filming himself in the mirror, his profile echoing the Dante Alighieri t-shirt he has on. These moments are both reference my time in Florence, where I became interested in photographs of my shadow and of mirrors and took time to experience things alone. As with lonely works, when showing or trying to explain them to others, they can lose all significance in others’ eyes, as it seems to in a reflexive comment by Tom, pulling another silly face.

This neatly continues the mini-plot of searching for the inspired moment, with it representing fruitless filming (significantly at the top of the stairs that featured in (demo)), causing Sandy to cringe once more. The staircase being an analogy of a passageway/'tunnel', we see this result (or ‘light’) is, perhaps, seemingly to Tom’s liking, as he then ‘comments’ on Sandy’s cringing, via his shocked look while on the phone. 

This phone shot represents a beginning, though not through frustration, as with the walk down the nave in (demo), but as if we are about to be given, like Tom, new information. This “information” is a section structured around Tom’s playing the piano, that he previously didn’t “have the power” to play. The notion of Sandy searching continues, with the piano giving both momentum and the analogy of creativity going underway. However Tom’s playing happened to be of another piece, and he is not creating, as such; this, like Sandy’s fruitless searching, is a kind of copying.

The movement to the right in the following shot of the field is a ‘meanwhile’, along with the piano. As Sam (though he goes on to become the main inspiration after it, he plays a small role in 3) is in the country, we sense the negative of the frantic, piano-playing fretting of Sandy and Tom. Sandy walks to the left of the frame in the next shot, reversing the movement just seen, perhaps implying this difference in attitudes. This walk is interrupted by a reminder of the ROAD CLOSED sign in (demo)’s wanderings.

Sam and the city folk are contrasted again, with Sam swigging (cider), while walking down his own, albeit leafy and sunlit, ‘tunnel’. This relaxed, summery feel is removed from the overexposed sunshine of Winchester, which seems to ape the countryside’s light. Tom, in the moment that is repeated at the end and beginning of the (redux) version, is at the very portal he ‘appeared’ from; now that we have broken the tension of the act, it seems (even more) ridiculous to him, and this adds to the sense of frustration for Sandy. We then, after minute clip of Tom walking out of the passage of (demo)’s centrepiece, see that even when the city folk drink, they worry about that too, looking for inspiration and filming it! Sandy breaks the flow of Sweet Talk, but not through laughter (not theirs, at least) but through fretting, in a way, over the “focus and… zoomy shit”.

This interruption is, like the first, followed by three descriptive shots. These are of upward objects: the first is an umbrella, the second a section of the cathedral’s façade and, after another, very brief, interruption, a large tree's stump. These reverse the meaning of the first interruption’s three shots: the present is represented first, by the outside umbrella in an overexposed sky, the past ((demo)) is represented by the grey of the cathedral and clouds, and the future/’light’ is by the truncated trunk. The interrupted tree is only half a light, and not even in colour, but it is near enough for the ‘Tom on the phone’ device to be used.

After another clip of Tom from (demo)’s centrepiece and a piano shot, we begin to see another aspect of Sandy’s searching: the people watching him do it. This implies how much time has passed between (demo) and (edit), and we see Sandy’s sister El, an inspirational and sympathetic audience, looking neutrally at the camera, before the gate (‘tunnel’) that the running man ran towards at the beginning of (edit). This faith, and lack of pressure/undue expectation in Sandy is contrasted with the passivity of the figure applying makeup, who looks into the mirror, as Sandy did, fruitlessly. That trivialisation of matters, as heard at the end of (edit), inspired the use of Sweet Talk, on a silver, linear note. A “slipping in” later, maybe representing all those who don’t care either way, there is a parody of (demo)’s centrepiece.

Some had said to me that (demo) was my best film, but the reason some gave was because it was “edgy”. Some also said that I was “pretty good at editing” and, obvious sour grapes aside, I felt that this was irritating because it seemed as if I was making this all thoughtlessly, in order to make something that just seemed cool. The centrepiece was met with particular enthusiasm by those who seemed to think that, and so, in a self-conscious way, I halved the transitions in the clips to speed up the walking to a more comic/illusionary pace. Apart from reminding me of the slapstick, sped-up Oil Man, Sugar, it seemed to also express my gut reaction to the idea rehashing something solely for a positive reaction.

The parody of the centrepiece is interrupted by a clip of a colourful tunnel and Sandy speaking (“yeah, yeah: I’m filming”). This is a flash-forward, as almost all of the scenes in（でも）had been shot at the same time as (edit). I knew I was going to try to use another sequence of Sandy and Tom walking, but not in (edit), and so hinting at change and, in a way, escape, even amongst the bitterness and frustration of the parody. Significantly, the other tunnel is in colour, and is followed by another interruption of a country view from behind a window (just as Sandy and Tom peer into the alley’s window), adding another layer of being close but not near enough to what Sandy wants.

The sunset ends the parody on a final note/note of finality, and acts as the ‘light’ that results from too much searching: it is as blinding as the overexposed white, and is inconclusive, just as Sandy’s search (in (edit)) has seemed to be. In the same way some photographers lean on the sun as a stand-in for significance (especially sunrises/sets), the Sandy filming seems to be now desperate for 'light'. Hence the sunset.

 Followed by a nightmare-like flash of ‘evil’ Tom from Who, we see a daydreaming Tom, implying that he has gone back to will continue to do the same thing (hang on the telephone) as before, despite the proximity of the ‘inspiration’, or “reason”, as Jessie Ware puts it, in the ‘meanwhile’ shot of water. 

The ‘evil’ Tom reappears in his mind, yet his own “reason” is shown to still not be out of reach, through a shot of the staircase viewed from above (thus subjugating it), albeit through the same kind of restrictive bars that are present in Who and in the window onto Sandy’s countryside vision.

I intended to create, after making (edit), the conclusive piece of the trilogy (both of 3 and of T O M,S) based on everything I had already filmed, including Who and The Oil Man, Sugar. Therefore, to hint at memory being the place this “reason” would be found, I concluded the (edit) on the archway from the earliest films, and to emphasise Tom’s nostalgic musing as a continuing force, along with Prue’s “that’s sweet”, to say that, from a certain angle, the section was a yet another failed attempt.

（でも）

The title, in hiragana, says ‘de mo’ which, in Japanese, can be translated to ‘however’, or ‘but’. This sense of addition (and parentheses), while echoing the English meaning of demo, as in (demo), appealed to my sense of self-reference. I chose the music, Metro Area's Miura, for its structure, pace and because I like it a bit more than Funkytown.

The section begins with the same nightmare-like flashes of Tom from the end of Who, though with a caption of “STOP!” from The Oil Man, Sugar. This was to simulate jolting awake, especially in keeping with the alternating glitch of “that’s sweet” (This section does seek to reassert its importance to those who thought (demo) and (edit) were “sweet”).

The opening shots proper of this section act as that label implies - they set the scene, though across both time and space. The first is from the end of Who, where Tom has ‘disappeared’ from, serving as a fade in and awakening. It was important to me that these first shots be unpeopled, to hint at this all being a predominantly memory-led film.

The second is of Tom’s bed-sit door in Who, with a cut-out still of Samuel L. Jackson’s face (from a scene in Soul Men). As we have just seen the place where Tom ‘disappeared’ (at the will of the ‘evil’, similarly tongue-lolling, Tom), it interested me to think of the long since left door at the moment of, or just after, Tom’s ‘disappearance’. A variation on the leaf tunnel “reason” shot of Sandy’s is next, though with less sky and not in colour. This brings us to the present, and to Sandy, with his associated theme of travel, in the form of the empty train station (Basingstoke, in fact), with a South West Trains vehicle pulling slowly into the left of the frame. Is he travelling to or from Winchester?

The camera, in a movement I experimented repeatedly with in this section, then zooms out from an open window, in Chris's room in Paris, while he plays the guitar. This was to recreate the same sense of being near something clear whilst in the midst of the dark, while serving as a ‘meanwhile’, and also as another "tunnel". Note the leaves outside.

This is then followed by, seemingly, a reversion to the past, with the fountains (“founts…”?) of Peninsula Square in Who. However, a fountain, in its nature, is unfixed, and so it is merely the idea, or memory, of this fountain that remains and defines it. This analogy of unfixed water will reappear at the conclusion of the film and, as at the end of the film, the introduction concludes with a shot from a moving car.

These introductory shots serve as a miniature version (overture, even) of the shape of 3: the ‘disappearance’ and doubting of the self, followed by life marching on, to (repeatedly) nearly finding the “reason” to oneself, travelling a long distance over a period of time, and, ultimately, finding that the reason is the same thing that has been changing and staying the same all along: yourself. After this, the sun sets and time moves further still. The path that lies ahead looks more hopeful, as the ‘tunnel’ of the countryside, that Sam is seen to tread, does.

With the future laid (sitting) before us, it seemed amusing to me that, the ‘prelude’ having described the film in brief, that Sam remembers that he almost ‘forgot’ about starting the film, and his exclamation of “oh, shit!” was the point where the beat, and film proper, begin. 

 Sam stands for the more self-assured, creatively secure, though passive presence in 3. He serves as a secondary narrator, and (as will be seen more fully in Lound August) his disposition is different to that of Tom (and Sandy). Tom’s anxiousness and bouts of confidence are contrasted with Sam’s natural, though not impenetrable, calm. Their walking side by side, though in different spaces, has the intention of showing duality, especially that in the mind of Sandy, who seems to think he must make a choice as to which he will be, and seems to be looking up to Sam’s choice more, hence his being higher in the shot.

Tom, having reverted at the end of (edit) to his inner conflict after the hopefulness and false dawn of the first interruption, is 'still' dreaming, and this can be seen as his ‘destination’ from the walking, for now. He reminisces about the stalking scene in The Oil Man, Sugar, which is fittingly anxious in itself.

As the tension rises, tied to P.I. Vollard’s pursuing the Oil Man, there is a break to the one of the only shots I filmed after the (edit) shoot, that of Sandy breaking the fourth wall and, here, seeming to getting ready for the action of the film, and reintroducing the theme of narcissism.

Vollard stops the Oil Man, and from the brief “STOP!” and flash of ‘evil’ Tom, showing his presence in Tom’s conflict, we are back in the present (approximately), with Tom playing the piano, implying that both his everyday routine and struggle, as seen in (edit), are continuing.

Sandy is then shown, in his memory, as performing something like the original ‘gag’ in (demo), where he emerges from what is ostensibly the cathedral to a much smaller building, to then dramatically cringe at something far off. The first of the these two shots incorporates the noise of chatter in the background, only to then present Sandy with silence, before yet another sealed portal, like Tom’s. His disappointment makes him remember (or, perhaps, made him remember at the time of filming (demo)) Tom walking to the gate-pillar in Who, where The Oil Man was spotted, something that has been in the past since its creation. Contrasting Tom’s worrying about his struggle, Sandy seems to still be more concerned with the past and its repercussion(s), and Tom’s movement of slowing to a halt serves as the pace of Sandy’s mind for now.

We then see a memory of the train journey seen briefly in (edit). Sandy is filming, and in a ‘meanwhile’ shot, we see a flower in Winchester (denoted by the distant siren) swell from black and white to colour, as Sandy is inspired by the shooting on the train. However, the true ‘light’ of colour is mixed with the false ‘light’ of overexposure, and so, as the ‘meanwhile’ returns, it teases the viewer with a zoom out from the leaves (significant, as these are the same leaves that, a few days later, I would film the true “reason” shot), only reveal the same flower.

Followed by a rapid cut of the original shot of this flower, we return to Sandy filming from the train’s window. We see flashes of colour, even the occasional square of blue sky; Sandy’s hand, clearly visible, and the overexposure are frustrating to his now slipping vision, causing an internal comment of the frustrated face-palm from The Oil Man, Sugar. He continues to film, however. This filming of this scene inspired the choice of song, Metro Area’s Miura, as I was listening to it on whilst filming this scene. At this point, I was unaware of the exposure being too high, and so was as frustrated as the scene in the film suggests.

After a the train-filming inspiration proves to be a brief, false ‘light’, the journey is sped up to just outside Micheldever, in a shot with trees at the bottom of the composition, starting an upward motion, to the sun itself, white from the exposure. This segues into black and white, as Sandy remembers filming for (edit), in Winchester. We see the running man/man running away, beyond the gate-tunnel, which does not provide an optimistic note.

We then see the opening shot of (edit) again, of Sandy walking down an alley, nearly meeting Tom. However, the shaky movement and disappointing ‘light’ at the end of this ‘tunnel’ are seen in fuller detail than in (edit) (i.e. less fragmentedly) and, in a way that comments on (edit) in the same critical way as (edit) did on the misunderstanding of (demo), Sandy is dissatisfied with this as an attempt at a “reason”. There is also a reference to the interpretation of clicking as a gesture of frustration, in a flashback from Who, thereby reversing the original meaning of the action.

Following are events that happened, in the film’s logic, at the time of (edit): Tom sits, lonely, at his kitchen table, before his phone rings. Sam is seen waiting with a phone to his ear, and the hand, from Who, interspersed between them can be interpreted in two ways:

1)    The original context of it being ‘evil’ Tom emerging from the water (water standing for nostalgia, via the Peninsula Square fountain) and of Tom struggling with his worries.

2)    The hand reaching from the water (water shown to ultimately be an analogy for the “reason” Sandy is searching for) is an analogy of Sam trying to reach out and communicate with Tom.

The fountain then appears (the all-powerful symbol of nostalgia for Sandy and Tom (see Who), though its importance is questioned through a reappearance of Sandy, in The Oil Man, Sugar, spitting out the false tears he tasted in a weeping scene, the importance of which, to me, is huge. I felt that during my time at Winchester, especially during my relationship at the time, I was encouraged to feel melancholy.  I felt I unnecessarily took on/affected issues, and forsook whole facets of myself in order to please people. After I living in Italy, I felt differently about many things, and this return to Winchester to film provided, along with an opportunity to talk to my friends face-to-face, the necessary stock-taking for me to begin to realise that I was fine with myself, more or less. The idea of keeping up pretences for old times' sakes began to seem so childish to me, and so that is how the false tears, the shift from an act (Sandy as the weeping woman) to the truth (Sandy as Sandy, wondering at how ridiculous it is to be crying orange squash), were important in shedding the past for me, which the fountain represents. Also, the tiny clip of the piano from the The Oil Man, Sugar scene resembles the piano from All My Friends, by LCD Soundsystem, a song that I particularly associate with my nostalgia (often, I think, for its own sake)/the fountain and the beginning of my relationship at school.

The fountain, speaking for itself, does not take the news well, and lets off a feeble squirting noise, as a kind of mutter. This idea of an inter-film dialogue continues, with Sandy and Tom, in Oil Man guise, examining the fountain more closely, revealing it to seem to be the dangerous fountain of Who’s climax.

This causes Sandy (in (demo) guise) to walk away, and Tom (in (edit) guise) follows suite, only to, like Orpheus, turn around and notice the camera. This self-conscious act, which occurs just as the characters seem to be leaving the fountain behind (albeit in a negative, disgusted manner), causes Tom to start to see himself as the star, through boredom (represented by Oscar, the dog).

However, the scene glitches, and zooms in ridiculously as Tom realises the falseness (the turning point represented by him being on the phone), though he then seemingly turns to the filmmaker/editor himself, to ask the point of this ridiculousness (through his saying “what??” in Who).

It then transpires that Sandy now thinks he is the star (…), which is reinforced by a sample (“I’m Pierce”) of the self-important Pierce Hawthorne from the television programme Community. He films himself in the mirror, which causes, in this internal dialogue, Tom to chase him (as in The Oil Man, Sugar), which only, albeit only a comic at first, leads to a lonely Tom walking the same path, in Sandy’s mind.

 He then, however, thinks of the frustration of the indecisive talk, around the disappointing bottle in Tom’s kitchen. This hints at the trivialising “that’s sweet” of (edit), and the idea that I was making a film “with just… music” is instantly met, in the internal dialogue, with Tom’s breaking character to say he was “just joking” in Who.

None of this has led Sandy any nearer to the “reason”, and, in a moment of frustration and mindlessness, he and Tom, in Oil Man guise, desperately hit the ground with a stick, as they did when searching for oil. This causes the “Huh?” of Who to be inverted, through utter confusion and being lost. This all results in the going back to the beginning of Sandy in (demo), but in a cropped shot, so as to abstract the concept further (the shot is an unfamiliar view of a familiar shot).

The interlude of the close up of Tom’s face is a transition from the humour of the previous segment to the realisation, in Sandy’s mind, that this is something more serious. As the tone changes, Sandy’s mind wanders through many of the places he has filmed, or been, mainly around Winchester, especially those with sentimental attatchment. This is to, through (except for a few very brief moments) unpeopled shots, recreate the sense of simultaneousness/similarity, across both time and space. If you look for your “reason” in everything briefly, I feel you would be far less likely to find it than if you looked at one or two things for longer. Therefore, this section also shows Sandy’s desperation heightening, from clips of around 0.5 seconds to a crescendo of 0.2/1 second clips.

The first shot is of the river that The Oil Man and his Partner pan for gold in. As it occurs in a flashback in The Oil Man, Sugar, this is one of (in the TOM,S filmic timeline) earliest occurrences, and was one of the first scenes we filmed.

A falsely ‘lit’/overexposed version of the leaf ‘tunnel’.

Just outside Winchester, looking over to St. Catherine’s Hill from a field where my girlfriend and I used to meet.

St. James’ Terrace, a place I walked and took photographs, near Peninsula Square and the railway, and felt happy when I was 16.

A gate near the tree where “reason” is seen (spoiler alert).

The stairs to Peninsula Square Tom struggled up in Who.

The sealed portal Tom ‘appeared’ from in (demo).

A farmstead, with St Catherine’s Hill in the distance, where, when I was 14, a group of friends and I, including Tom, secretly took a shortcut through.

The doorway Tom emerged from, having ‘reappeared’, in (demo).

The dark ‘tunnel’ in the bowels of Tom’s residence in Who, from behind bars.

Winchester, looking west, viewed from St. Giles’ Hill, from behind bars.

A path just by Peninsula Square, near the ‘interrupted’ tree.

There is an interruption, with the first scene we ever filmed (significantly, it began with me waking up, in The Oil Man, Sugar), in which The Oil Man frantically tells his Partner about a nearby river they can pan for gold in. The overacted, sped-up nature of this silent discussion fits with the increased speed of the pillow shots.

This confused section's crescendo  results another version (this time not entirely a parody) of (demo)’s “centrepiece”, though in the colourful underpass near the railway station. Sandy walks towards the camera, changing the former centrepiece’s composition, and the view, as opposed to a still camera, is cropped and cuts rapidly, still somewhat creating the illusion of Sandy and Tom’s simultaneous walking but with in a less self-assured manner; this miss isn’t so near.

After this section, the pure desperation forces them to work together (so to speak), if only (in their respective minds) in memory alone, shown by the internal dialogue shot of Sandy raising a magnifying glass to his eye, in The Oil Man, Sugar. This, as before, signifies the memorymaker examining the following memories with greater scrutiny, and attempts to lighten the mood after so many frustrations.

The film continues in an internal dialogue, but beginning with a memory of Tom playing the piano. As seen before, this is Tom’s metaphor for his internal struggle and for creativity, though here it takes on another level: that of the moment being filmed for (edit). A shot of Basingstoke station, looking westwards, interjects, and this refers to Sandy’s travelling to film. Tom, once under the scrutiny of the moving camera, loses his composure and inner battle. The presence of others distorts his mind’s eye, and he gives up, in a glitching way, implying this isn’t the first time.

This met by a surprised Sandy, who seems to be amused at something (perhaps the masterly editing). As with the face that caused the first interruption and turning point in (edit), Sandy’s face is out of focus. He is also made to laugh at something off camera, which the internal dialogue Tom responds with laughing also. However, another, P.I. Vollard, does not want another interruption, or indeed find such things funny at all, and so shoos away the prospect so harshly that the film/music stops in shock (ironically causing an interruption), until he relents for a moment and waves his goodbye.

 Yet again, however, we seem to be getting no closer to the “reason”, and a narcissistic, in-focus Sandy returns. He checks to his left, the source of the earlier laughter, twice, and blows his cheeks out in boredom, only to nearly lose his composure again. Just as he is about to talk to the left, the scene shifts to Tom’s overexposed garden, with the bottle (him off camera) saying, “boring…”. From this inconclusiveness and, once again, uninspired boredom, we are in another rut, like Tom, sitting at his kitchen table. This shifts back to a memory, be it Tom’s or Sandy’s, and can be seen as a transition between the internal dialogues.

The next, rhythmically cut string of yeps and yeahs are an affirmative moment for Tom: he is communicating with, it is implied via a brief cut, Sam and he is confident; he (remembers) makes the leap from the sealed portal which, importantly, reveals the artificiality of him ‘appearing’ – he never disappeared!

For the first time, the film allows this (the truth) to be the (one) truth: there is no alternative for this moment, and, for Tom, it matters hugely in its singularity. An analogy is made to him leaving his bed-sit, confidently, in Who, and then goes directly to the stairs. The stairs serving as a kind of passageway, the kind he struggled up in Who, he easily scales them but, with the audio muted and his ‘evil’ grinning face out of shot, he is just Tom. There is no ‘teleporting’ and no ‘evil’ Tom. There are brief flashes, though these are of the empty staircase viewed from above, reinforcing the fact that all of these events are occurring within Sandy and Tom.

This walk by (the real) Tom is a cause for celebration: Oil Man Sandy and Partner Tom, as they did when they discovered oil, clasp hands in victory. Partner Tom even throws his hat into the air though, in a moment of humour, the Oil Man Sandy thinks this excessive, unnecessarily pointing out that Tom has dropped his hat. He then has his own private excess, a victorious clenched fist, which triggers a vision of the “reason” shot, in colour again. While hinting we are reaching the “reason” itself, this is presented to be the dreaming of ‘dreaming’ Sandy, who, sitting beneath a tree, is simply closing his eyes for dramatic effect and leaves similar to those above him, while he and Tom filmed (demo); he is even holding the same plastic Sainsbury’s bag (with beer in) that the now probably real Tom did on the stairs.

The next truth to be told directly to the audience is that of Tom’s false ‘light’: when viewed in colour and cropped slightly, it becomes Tom walking on a late May day, being filmed by Sandy with an inappropriate exposure setting. The newly liberated Tom doesn’t worry, as he previously falsely confident gait is now genuine; the insolent dog to the right of the frame has been cropped off because of the change of tone. The situation is clarified by the ridiculous interruption of Tom saying “oh at least well the weather’s alright”, to a snowily overexposed scene in his garden. 

Sandy then, alone, revisits the stairs Tom struggled on and, not so surprisingly, finds them empty, to the point of them being underwhelming enough for Sandy to walk away from them, while filming. This frankness of attitude, and shedding of nostalgia, is emphasised by the following shot of the empty bench, in colour. Such an approach, realistic while sensitive, even allows three of the oppressive columns in Peninsula Square to be set against a blue sky; whether that is a compliment or slight is up to the audience.

This is because, as Oil Man Sandy points out to Partner Tom in analogy, it is “all in the face… all in the head”.

The “truthful, sensitive” nature has its limitations too, without a doubt; the newly presented view onto the country from behind the window is beautiful, but it is that alone. Whether one reads into the particular view or distance is a factor, but El reappears, serving as the semi-captive audience, and seems to be unmoved. This is a reaction which, ironically, I have never got from her but from many others, and I suppose the following shot of Tom, momentarily back into a bad mood, is a comment on that reception. I am reminded, though, that when someone talks to me in a way that excites me, as the one on the other end of the phone for Tom does, it does not matter to me. In short, I don’t try to ‘convert’ everybody, nor do I try to explain the detail I went into composing them, when showing these films, unless asked specific questions. I want these to be as ineffable and open-ended as they need to be. 

Significantly, the caller is Sam, who was, at the end of and after this film, a huge inspiration. He seems at first to be answering his phone, though is actually drinking cider, carefree as he has thus been, with all the promise of summer and life ahead of him (and us). A breaking of character in The Oil Man, Sugar, in which Tom and Sandy casually scratch themselves after an intense scene, has the air (along the with snippet of sampled, jaunty piano) of “that’s all, folks”.

However, in one last moment, the ‘evil’ Tom reappears, somewhat less than grandly with his mere snippet of Stravinsky, and prevents the ending. We seem to be in danger again, and the following shot is similar to the opening. The vacuum-cleaning man, however, saves the day, as he is (for those who remember) the only person who interacts in (demo): it is this interaction that seems to derail the short reversion of the soundtrack to Jasmine (demo), as Sandy, whose future lies off camera, walks off frame.

By this point, I imagined that nobody would want the characters to lose what they had gained, and so, with that in mind, I included a brief clip of the “Come on.” caption from Who. In the following shot, we then see the same Tom as ever walking down the street from the beginning of this section, but with no analogous Sam to make him seem worried by comparison. Sandy, meanwhile, is gazing with his newly acquired/realised/defined nature down St. James’ Terrace, and balking at first, choosing to not go down it. It is then that he remembers Tom, his newly confident walk, and goes down the past’s road slowly, squinting closely (hence the unfocus).

He remembers the Peninsula Square fountain, once so dangerous (as both nostalgia and the emerging spot of evil doppelgangers), and now a pleasant, forgiven, fountain. He remembers the way that he directed the ‘evil’ Tom to make a face like the Samuel L. Jackson poster on Tom’s door, because they would find it funny.

He then with some remembers, with some nostalgia still, the archway, both in the summery Who and wintry The Oil Man, Sugar. However, he now realises that if one repeats the past too often, it can cause the track to skip and lose its rhythm. He now realises the places will always be there, existing beyond a fixed time but always changing.

He then remembers when he was at Sam’s, and saw the water feature in their garden, and how this is the real “reason”: something as unwordable as water, and as simple as the leaves in the trees. He nearly loses his “reason” again when filming some flowers; it will never be a guarantee he can go to, and must be made to adapt and be questioned, though not without the wisdom gained from experience. Perhaps he should accept that he may well lose it, again. He should probably knows that that is its nature, and he has lost it before.

However, as he has learnt whilst making this longer film, a good film (and life) is not necessarily about things ‘happening’ all the time; we cannot stare at the sun for too long, but we are able to know what it (the ‘light’) looks like, more clearly, when looking through something else, such as leaves or people.

The evening I left Sam’s, after finishing shooting, there was a red sky.

Of course, the potentially cyclical nature of this beast means that, as I said somewhere above, this could, in a different time, of course, happen again. And again.