Shutter Speed
September 9, 2013All of this year’s Judges are heavily involved in the world of motorcycles as well as Art and film, and the MFF is very proud to have such a strong group of personalities together for this year’s Panel. We can’t wait to announcing their official selections for 2013 this week. Read about the Judge Panel HERE.
Until then, we give you Shutter Speed. A 2011 short film by Toast, a filmmaker who makes motorcycle films specifically. It stars our Judge Stacie B. London, and was commissioned by our Judge JP of The Selvedge Yard, to accompany an exhibition of photographs in 2011. Enjoy!
A bit about Toast and Shutter Speed
toast_by_JP
(Toast, photograph by JP)
As a kid, I spent a lot of time framing events through the wide-angle lens of my sister’s Six-Million Dollar Man action figure; the doll’s distorted “bionic eye” offered my first taste of composition. Later, when I got my mitts on an actual camera, I became a disciplined student of the technical aspects of photography, learning to combine the science of aperture with the visual elements that weight the frame. Proportion and balance understood, it become easier to anatomize a harmonic image – but I was playing in a punk band. Learning the rules only taught me how to break them; I found imbalance and discord were viable options. I shot through candy wrappers, shower curtains, and melted zip lock bags. I was right back to my “bionic” roots, seeing through the misshapen eye of a cheap lens. My experimentation extended into the dark room and eventually to art school, where I studied structural, materialist filmmaking; I could once again explore as well as reject those techniques.
Motorcycles are the perfect subject for experimental film. Beyond the visual metaphor of projecting stories through machines – and even without a focused image – light and shadow bend to express the blur of motion. Grime and grit, tasted through grainy texture and the slick oil of a passing reflection, reveals there are thousands of routes to any one destination. There is no single technique for telling a story, no single narrative, no single medium. Mood, texture and rhythm participate in the composition every bit as much as the captured essence of a portrait. If the stillness of a vast landscape draws me in, it’s the crawling, close up details that hold me there. The challenge of capturing these complex, yet subtle qualities in characters, machines and events is the challenge I find truly inspiring.
The vintage motorcycle community is the perfect place to find collaborators and subjects that appreciate the aesthetic of the new, the old, and the even older. Like our bikes, my films combine fragments of nostalgia in concert with more current or state-of-the art technology. Form and function both serve a purpose, the occasional chasm between them responsible for more than a few spontaneous roadside repairs. In filmmaking- as in riding, racing and even crashing- it’s best to respect the rules, even while we bend them. Otherwise they’re sure to leave a scar!
I am extremely honored that The Motorcycle Film Festival will be screening “Shutter Speed” during its party. The film ties in with the event because of its collaboration including two of the festival’s judges: JP from The Selvedge Yard and motorcycle racer Stacie B. London. The film, commissioned by JP as a behind-the-scenes short, follows photographer Scott Pommier and SBL. Having worked with JP and Stacie, I can see why they are perfect as judges; both balance a tenacious commitment to visual aesthetics with a devotion to motorcyles, moto-culture, and trace vestiges of motorcycle history. I am lucky to have worked with them and now, luck strikes again; since a screening of Shutter Speed includes me in this historic event!
– Toast, toastola.com