sculptingthisearthfilm.com

Back again, a week later, this time in the bed of a river flowing through the Jonkershoek Valley, to get shots of Strijdom walking along the river to be intercut with the footage of him talking that we shot the previous week. Last shooting on the project – 16 months and 10 days after our first shoot for the film, just down the road in the same valley, on 15 December 2020. Quite a journey.

Back in the Jonkershoek Valley, this time in a beautiful shaded spot under a group of small trees where we could get the last shots we needed of Strijdom talking on-camera.

We knew we needed shots in a wintry landscape for the middle of the film but could not wait until mid-2022 to get these shots as the film had to be completed. The Western Cape’s mediterranean climate duly provided what we needed: in the first week of April, less than a month after our light-filled late-summer shots in March in the same valley, a brief spell of cold, wet weather with a slight drizzle gave us the opportunity to film Strijdom in a setting that closely resembled the appearance of the Cape mid-winter.

Following day: a perfect spot for Strijdom to talk on camera – in the shadow of a solitary tree seemingly growing out of a rock, with the vast mountain-backdropped space behind him filled with Stellenbosch’s beautifully bright late summer morning light, and with colours and weather conditions that made for seamless intercutting of this material with the shots of Strijdom walking in the same landscape the previous day.

Having completed all the filming of the making of the artworks on the project by November 2021, bringing us full circle to summer again, exactly as planned, we could move on to filling the gaps – particularly with footage and sound recordings of Strijdom talking, of which we still had almost nothing. Not for lack of trying: with one exception our previous attempts had always been thwarted by noisy environments filled with the sounds of civilisation that we did not want in the soundtrack. We managed to find a quiet spot in Jonkershoek Valley where we only had to work around the sound of the occasional contingent of forestry workers or planes passing directly over Stellenbosch on the way to or from Cape Town International. On the beautiful late summer’s day we were getting our first shots of Strijdom walking in the valley (to be used with the voice-overs) we were lucky to have a strong wind at a high altitude blowing a spectacular white cloud over the mountains at the end of the valley.

Great to be back in the forest in Jonkershoek outside Stellenbosch where we had shot so many works in April and May – the setting now, in the full flush of early summer, looking very different compared to those distant days of autumn. Got some shots of Strijdom gathering branches and sticks from which to make a work called “Forest sleeping” – a figure of a person sleeping in the woods.

Early start to the day, driving out to Stellenbosch well before sunrise to capture images of the work against the sky in the first light of day and shortly thereafter. Deliberately chose a morning forecast to be windless, to contrast with conditions on the day the work was installed. Another gift from meteorological circumstance: I had visualised and intended shots of the work against a clear sky, but the wispy white nearly backlit clouds on the day added significant visual interest and made for far more beautiful shots than those in my imagination and planning beforehand.

Planned long in advance for this date, the day on which Strijdom installed the work entitled “Catching the wind” that he had made previously in Australia, Italy and Germany turned out to be an exceptionally blustery one in Stellenbosch. A passerby living in one of the houses overlooking the site told us that when the clouds start forming over the mountain peaks in the distance early on windy days, as was the case, one could expect it to keep picking up over the course of the day, with strong gusts by late afternoon and into the evening. The forecast based on local knowledge turned out to be spot-on. The wind became the overriding aspect of our experience of the day’s work. We were concerned initially that Strijdom’s bamboo leaves might be damaged by the gusts, and shooting conditions were increasingly challenging as the day wore on. But the pieces all remained standing, with only minor, repairable damage. And in the end the physical demands of the shooting conditions and the discombobulated feeling afterwards were well worth enduring: the images we came away with were far more dramatic and interesting than they would have been on a windless day. The arc of the steady build-up in wind speed and gustiness in the course of the day was clearly visible in our shots and became an element of the story in the edit. It did not feel like it at all at the time, but the wind had been a gift.

Strijdom discovered a beautiful setting for this work on a grassy hill in an area on the outskirts of town where we had not filmed before: the reeds set off against the clear sky, and the mountain backdrop framing the piece perfectly. What a canvas on which to paint with materials from nature. Technically, it’s the day before the start of winter in Stellenbosch, but as Strijdom correctly pointed out while we were reviewing our cell phone recce pictures of the location beforehand: it looks like Sound of Music.

An abundance of yellow leaves gathered into a square demarcated by large characterful dead tree branches as guidelines during the making of the work. Surprising two cyclists on mountain bikes who ventured into the frame, evidently not expecting to encounter land art on their usual path through the forest.

Enough yellow leaves to work with this time. Remarkable how the general feeling in the forest had turned decidedly more autumnal than it had been a mere two weeks earlier. Great that the leaves were not just uniformly yellow, but were revealed in the close-ups to be turning black in parts already, colour blighted by death and decay setting in.

The plan was for a work with yellow autumn leaves onto a tree, but all the fallen yellow leaves that had been on the forest floor before had turned black completely, and the trees had not yet shed any more. Strijdom found these green leaves to work with instead – which felt appropriate on such a warm Sunday afternoon in May with still an air of summer to it, but with the forest in the background visibly bare already. The act of fixing the green leaves onto the tree seemed a last look back at summer.

Back in the Jonkershoek Valley, to shoot what must be one of the last works in the summer section of our film. A beautiful example of what we have in mind when we speak of the fragility and ephemerality of these artworks: a light breeze comes up as dusk falls while Strijdom is completing the work, constantly threatening to destroy the piece, and he repeatedly has to carefully restore to their positions a few stalks of grass blown out of place. To do justice to the work with a view from sufficiently high up, I have to get a few shots of the completed work standing on a ladder Strijdom has brought along – an unmissable perspective, enabling one to see the circle properly from this height, but rather wobbly with no means of stabilising the hand-held tripod on top of the ladder; thank goodness for stabilisation in post.

Filming over three beautiful late-summer days along the southwestern edge of the Langebaan lagoon on the West Coast, a hundred-minute drive from Cape Town. Based in the remote and improbably picturesque village of Churchhaven, only a handful of houses overlooking the lagoon in an ultra-idyllic setting inside the West Coast National Park. Great to be working in the flat, open, unpopulated landscape with its unbroken horizontal lines and big sky, so strikingly different from the verdant and enclosed Stellenbosch valley settings – not to mention derelict industrial interiors. Valuable for the strong visual contrast, and an opportunity to work with the scale of the landscape – a scale so vast that it dwarfs the artworks and the human presence.

Our third shoot at the abandoned sawmill, this time inside a large empty structure with striking V-shaped beams holding up the roof, repeating and receding into the distance, completely open to the elements on one side. Shortly after we filmed this, demolition activity on the site picked up pace. Driving past, we could see the location of our three shoots slowly being transformed, with ongoing site clearance, services installation and the construction of roads and infrastructure.

Our first shoot with Strijdom talking in front of the camera – high up on the mountain slope in the valley – turned out to be a gusty late afternoon. A few touch and go moments, as the mic boom stand was not quite as secure as it should have been, but the deadcat wind shield did a great job in the circumstances, practically completely eliminating any wind noise. And the wind ended up serving us well, sweeping a beautifully dramatic cloud over the mountain in the frame behind Strijdom.

Fourth consecutive day starting at 4 am, emerging from the parking garage in Cape Town at 5 am sharp – as soon as allowed by lockdown curfew rules – to be in Jonkershoek by 6. This time of year, once the sun comes over the mountains shooting time is over. Fortunately we were working up the mountain slope and the mountains are high, which still left only just enough time for Strijdom to complete the work with the sticks and for me to get the shots. Before that we did a shot of Strijdom walking high up on the burnt mountain slope, a tiny figure moving from right to left in the frame. Just as he had done this and we had completed the first shot, the sun – otherwise still behind the mountains – started beautifully lighting up a part of the mountain in the frame, just to the right of the first vertical third. Thanks to coordination via cell phone over this far greater than shouting distance, we were able to redo the walk and capture the moment.

Third consecutive 4 am start to the day. The water-line sequence needed shots of the forest before sunrise and in fact at very first light, to precede and contextualise the shots of Strijdom first on the forest path and then making the water line on the wooden bridge. The forest is magical so early, and I was lucky that weather conditions were identical to the previous Saturday when we shot the sequence.

Had to get up at 4 am once again, to be able to drive out of the parking garage in Cape Town at 5 am, the earliest allowed under lockdown regulations at the time, with the plan of being able to record early morning sounds of insects and birds in the forest where we had shot the water line the previous Saturday. Arrived there only to find conditions very different, with a breeze blowing through the trees – rendering the sound unusable for the footage of the windless morning when we filmed. Recorded it anyway as I had driven an hour to get there, and on the basis that the sound of the wind through the trees might come in useful in some other sequence in the film. Another 4 am start the next day – with better luck. No wind, and although the birds and insects were not quite as noisily conspicuous and ubiquitous as I had hoped, they were not completely absent or quiet either. Fortunately I had recorded some cicadas – that characteristic and abiding soundtrack of Stellenbosch summers – some weeks ago in January already, on one of our very first shoot days. Forestry workers starting up their petrol chainsaws at the beginning of their work day called an end to the recording session. 

Strijdom drew a water line on a little bridge on a path in the forest early on a summer’s morning just as the sun was coming through the trees. Carefully timed, during a site visit on a day beforehand, to enable us to capture it before the direct sunlight started falling on this area. Road just next to the forest, to the left of the frame, audibly popular with hikers and cyclists particularly on a beautiful Saturday morning in summer. Had to wait for the right moment, and were lucky to be able to capture the sound of Strijdom walking over the bridge and the water falling without noise from the road, while we were getting the shot. Great shots afterwards of the bright Stellenbosch light cascading through the forest foliage. Forest sounds to be recorded on another day when the outdoor enthusiasts had gone.

Twenty four hours later, back in the very different setting of derelict industrial space. Strijdom brought bags of sawdust to the old sawmill to make a large x on the floor of one of the many buildings here offering rare opportunities to work in such enormous open indoor areas.

A past master at spotting surfaces in nature that can effectively serve as canvases for his art, Strijdom noticed this field of hard plants that take on an almost silvery appearance this time of the year. Just as the work was complete the moon rose from behind the mountain that was already in the frame – a serendipity creating a beautiful end point for the rising left-to-right line made by the ridge of the sunlit mountain, which in turn was the perfect counterpoint to Strijdom’s receding golden line, leading the eye from foreground to the start of the mountain’s gentle diagonal. Sunset is so late this time of the year that by the time I had finished packing up, there was just under an hour left to get back to Cape Town – which I had to achieve to comply with lockdown curfew, at the time requiring us to be off the roads by 9 pm; managed to get back to my spot in the parking garage with only minutes to spare. A few months later the silver plants had turned an unusable brown, and the canvas was gone.

Strijdom discovered a derelict sawmill on the outskirts of town. This vast sprawling complex of diverse old industrial buildings spread over the grounds was once a hive of woodworking activity. (Indeed, I have vivid memories of the smell of freshly sawed wood emanating from it when I was living in the area as a student an unsettlingly distant three and a half decades ago.) With an abundance of interesting surfaces, textures, structures, patterns and cavernous spaces it seemed to offer many opportunities – to be seized before its imminent demolition to make way for urban development. Strijdom drew a water circle. We were also excited about the potential of the rough unpainted wall that looked like a Rothko, just more impressive – at over two storeys high and probably more than fifteen meters wide, far larger than the largest canvas the man ever painted. Age and industrial neglect had left it with a beautiful patina, and we tried to do something with it. But the light in the space was insufficient, and with its almost oily residue of old dust water seemed not to take on it.

Getting shots of Strijdom walking down a deserted country lane with his reeds seemed like a good idea – until we started, and the idyllic little gravel road that seemed to lead to nowhere in particular turned out to be not so deserted after all, but well travelled in fact. It became a stop-start experience as we had to get out of the way of passing cars all the time, interrupting the recording to get camera and microphone off the road. Strijdom made rectangles of various sizes, tricking the eye as to size, distance and relative position.

After the Christmas break we returned to the scene of the first shoot with the intention of getting some cut-aways and wider shots of the pyramids on the water. Strijdom got wet again, but the wider angle only ended up including clutter we did not want in the frame, and the cut-away shots turned out in the edit to be superfluous. While I was setting up and we were waiting for the direct sunlight to go, Strijdom hung grass stalks in a tree.

We were delighted to be able to work in a setting so different from the first day’s shoot. Harsh and wild, it made for what we thought was a valuable contrast with the lush and verdant setting on the water two days earlier. Nobody would guess that this was a mere minute’s walk up the gentle mountain slope from the pond in the garden. Two weeks later baboons had stripped away sections of the bark on the fallen tree, and the beautiful strong horizontal lines in our images were no more.

Filming on the project started well, late in the midsummer afternoon of 15 December, with Strijdom’s bamboo pyramids successfully set afloat one by one on the sky-reflecting water. The light was perfect after the sun had disappeared behind the mountain, and weather conditions were ideal. We were able to capture the serenity of the scene, with Strijdom in the pond, leaving the light structures he had made to drift slowly on the surface. We were also lucky to be able to get the sound while filming him at work in the water, recording hadedas and other birds overhead, tiny frogs croaking, and the bubbles and movement of the water as Strijdom moved around: later in the shoot, from somewhere, a valley resident’s music wafted in, rather breaking the spell of the meditative Zen moment – but by then we had caught it in the sound files and footage.