Tankwa Karoo
Working according to the project plan drawn up before the first shoot months before: Tankwa Karoo in winter, between four and five hours’ drive out of Cape Town, depending, that is, on the speed one opts for on the seemingly interminable stretch of dirt road making up a substantial part of the journey – and on how many flat tyres one ends up with, as I would later learn. Having arrived there the day before and spent the first morning attending to the flat tyre picked up on the last few kilometres on the way to the camp, and then scouting locations, we headed out late afternoon for our first shoot in the arid landscape. While I was setting up the jib and getting ready to film Strijdom making a work of intersecting lines, he noticed that the wind had come up, giving us the perfect opportunity to shoot something else we had always wanted to do and that would not be possible on windless days: the infinite, unpredetermined variations in shape of a red cloth in the warm breeze against the clear late-afternoon sky. Immediate change of plan to use the opportunity, as the wind might not return before the end of the week when we have to leave.