Filming at the Fringe

Press, 19 February 1986, Page 20

Filming at the Fringe

By

JOAN BEGG

While people learnt how to juggle, ride unicycles and clown in the Festival of Fringe Theatre last week, a film crew wielded its cameras discreetly on the fringes.

Their intention — to capture aspects of the festival, the sharing of skills between tutor and student, the social atmosphere and the performer. The initial idea was to create a documentary, said Christchurch film director, Stuart Devenie. But that would have meant keeping the camera in the background and encouraging people to ignore it. “In fact they would have been only too aware of its presence. We did not want to intrude on the relationship between the tutor students and performers.” ; So the documentary was given a more creative edge. The crew selected and focused on four students, representing a family of mother, father, son, and daughter. The camera traces each member’s progression through the festival week, from wary novitiate to skilled performer at the end of festival “Extrava-

ganza.” Their growth, both individual and as a family, is measured by recurrent family meetings around a table.

The film, which will be 12.5 minutes long when complete, was a contrast of the formalised but bizarre behaviour going on in the classooms and the performances, and the very ordinary life of the family, said Mr Devenie. What the film set out to show was that the festival was available to everybody. “People have the idea that the fringe festival is something others do. “There is a performer inside everybody and the festival offers the opportunity to release it” -Mr

Devenie said. “It’s all about taking risks and having an environment where it is safe to take risks.” The film, as well as documenting the festival, provided Christchurch film individuals with the chance to co-ordinate - their skills for the first time, under the auspices of the recently formed, government-assisted Film and Video Access group. All did it without being paid and most juggled filming with full-time work.

Mr Devenie has alternated film direction with rehearsals for the Court Theatre ' production, “Jumpers,” in which he takes the major role of George. He was keen to direct the film because it “was a safe way to develop new skills and brush up on old ones.”

Not to mention the challenge of preparing, planning, scripting and shooting a film within two weeks. The last frame was shot at the fringe festival’s Extravaganza on Saturday.

The transition to film was not difficult The technical crew was so experienced and supportive, Mr Devenie said, and left him free to concentrate

on the actors and what they were doing. The film crew had a broad idea of where the characters were going and had scripted shots, said Mr Devenie. Once the festival and filming started the actors began feeding into their characters the skills they were acquiring, and fleshing out their parts. Conversation amongst the "family” was improvised.

"Because everyone was sufficiently open to the fact that things might change, they were prepared for change and very accommodating.” The next stage is postproduction — honing down the reels of film into a 12.5-minute piece which will be used by the Arts Centre for promotion and offered to television in New Zealand and overseas.

Although theatre is his “first love,” Mr Devenie hopes to direct more films. He is modest about his screen ambitions.

He wants to learn more about film making. And not just films. “Next year I am thinking of coming back (to the fringe festival) as a student, ~and learning to juggle, to stilt walk . . .”