Sunset Strip: production notes
How the film was made
Getting started
In the spring of 1994 I was heavily involved
in making a 16mm pilot for the BFI called As Yet
Unseen. Filming was very tricky as we were shooting
single frame within a set of a living room using tracking
shots, 35mm back projections and hundreds of animated
fireplace tiles. It was all pretty traumatic as both my
Beaulieu cameras kept breaking down. Every ten feet or so
the take-up spool would slip leaving a tangle of film in
the camera. Each time we had to open the camera back and
unjam the film. This meant extra filming through the night
to cover the lost footage. It was torture.
After this I'd had enough of technology for a while. For my
next project I wanted to make something simple which relied
mostly on me and the images I created using film as a
physical medium. Direct contact: me, film, light.
Definitely no movie cameras. I got excited about an idea
that had been bubbling through my brain for a film called
Sunset Strip.
The film was to be a day-by-day diary of a year's sunsets,
rendered directly onto a continuous strip of 35mm film. I
wanted it to be as mesmeric as a sunset, with a big screen
presence. It was my cinematic leap to the expanded canvas
of 35mm. I found out that the Arts Council and Channel 4
Animate! deadline had been extended, got my application
into a coherent form and posted it off just in time. I knew
it was a tasty project and in with a good chance, but
funding is unpredictable - particularly if you make films
without a script or storyboard.
Then in June on my birthday I had a surprise phone call
from David Curtis at the Arts Council to tell me that
Animate! would fund Sunset Strip. In July and
August I signed contracts, had meetings with the lab which
would eventually make an internegative and print from my
hand-made 35mm filmstrip, organized insurance for the
production, went swimming a lot, and generally got into
gear to start the project.
A year spent watching the sun setting
Sunset number 1
1st September 1994 Caprera Place, Plymouth
After a blistering day, a twenty minute walk uphill through
the back streets to my first location. Living in a city
it's been tricky finding places from which to observe the
setting sun. It's been important to choose sites which are
not more than a mile from either my home or my studio. This
project requires a commitment at a certain time each day
for a whole year, and this feels a bit like having a job -
I want to make it as easy as possible for myself.
My first location is 156 Caprera Place at the top of the
hill - from the doorstep I get a clear skyline over to the
west, sandwiched between houses and street lamps. From
today, the sun will appear to travel south along the
horizon, then mid-December at the solstice it will move
back to the north. I reckon I'll get a few weeks up here
before the sunset is cut off by buildings.
I don't know who lives in this house and I feel a bit
furtive as I sit drawing the different stages of the sunset
in my notebook. The sun changes from a dazzling Belisha
into a huge crimson ringed orb as it slips below the
horizon at 7.52 and I snap my Polaroid.
Sunset number 75
14th November 1994 Plymouth Hoe
From a bench overlooking the sea front I'll get a clear
view of the setting sun for the next few months over the
hills of south east Cornwall. Bundled up against a near
gale I draw the flat, slate grey sky. There's a mere pink
wisp of a sunset just after 4, then the rain starts. An
intense smell of ozone and the wind so strong it blows all
my pencils off the bench. Back to the studio to dry off and
mount up work for my exhibition which opens at Plymouth
Arts Centre in four days. I'm showing a video installation
based on As Yet Unseen, with photos, props, designs and
drawings from other films. I'm also showing work in
progress for Sunset Strip, including the 35mm test strips
I've made using cut-up crazed Polaroids, blood and varnish.
Sunset number 108
17th December 1994 Plymouth Hoe
In a storm with a scarf tied round my head. The sky
horizontal military grey pleats. There's a weird icy lemon
light and the eerie whistling whine of wind through rigging
in the marina. Sunset: a peachy hole opens up in the clouds
for one minute.
Sunset number 140
23rd January 1995 Plymouth Hoe
For five minutes in between hail storms the thunderous
cloud front lifts above Mount Edgcumbe to reveal a cavern
of incandescent turquoise and fiery orange. A huge mass of
gulls circle low over Drake's Island.
Poet Kenny Knight writes:
"For me one of the ways to motivate writing or simply
spring-clean cobwebs is to take long slow walks, whatever
the weather, walking along the seafront, watching the waves
crash on the rocks. Often I'd be aware of Kayla Parker on
the man-made cliffs above, wearing a big overcoat and a
scarf tied around her head, following a year of sunsets, as
the big golden goose migrated for another day, slowly
setting out of camera range. To me what Kayla was doing was
akin to the way a novelist works. Day after day writing the
same story."
Sunset number 218
6th April 1995 the Dewerstone, Dartmoor
Up on top of the moor drawing till after 8. The sun a
scorched pumpkin blazing through a rip in the mass of
boiling clouds over Cornwall.
Sunset number 272
30th May 1995 Prospect Place, Plymouth
Been coming up here for nearly two months now for the
panoramic view. Sun sets just after nine and the street is
empty apart from me, with my notebook and Polaroid camera,
and a pair of prostitutes who share a mobile phone. A slow
stream of dodgy-looking punters creep by. The sunset drops
like a poached egg into a gush of steam from the Millbay
laundry.
Sunset number 328
25th July 1995 Prospect Place, Plymouth
Incredible heat, like an oven door opening in your face.
The wind's been getting stronger throughout the day,
breaking branches off trees. The atmosphere very tense. One
of the prostitutes was raped and beaten last month, then
dumped outside the Barracks. The man still hasn't been
caught. The sky is bruised indigo purple slashed with
crimson. The sunset a yellow eye peeping through a slit. I
don't hang around for long.
Sunset number 365
31st August 1995 156 Caprera Place, Plymouth
Back to my original location for some peace. Pros Place too
much of a magnet for nutters. This is my last sunset. I
take three Polaroids to celebrate.
Making the film
The 35mm filmstrip itself was made in my studio during
December 1995 and January 1996. Every sunset takes up
twelve frames - so we see each sunset for half a second on
screen when the film is projected.
I created the images frame by frame on a strip of 35mm
leader using materials such as ink, bleach, varnish,
magnolia petals and net stocking. The filmstrip images -
there are over four thousand hand-painted frames in
Sunset Strip - are based on the time-lapse
drawings, notes and Polaroid photographs made on location
each day of the setting sun between 1st September 1994 and
31st August 1995.
There are no edits in the film at all. I started at the
beginning of the filmstrip with the first sunset, and
worked my way in sequence through the year to the last
sunset, number 365. Even the film's titles and credits have
been typed directly onto the filmstrip, which I fed through
an electric typewriter frame by frame.
The sound design for Sunset Strip was composed by
Stuart Moore. We collected sound recordings at different
times during the year of observing the setting sun - some
of the sounds were recorded on location, and some we made
in the studio. We combined all these to create a powerful
and evocative soundscape with dubbing mixer Paul Roberts.
The 35mm filmprint and beyond
The final stage of making the film was to
have Soho Images laboratory in London combine the
hand-drawn 35mm filmstrip and the audio tracks in a 35mm
film print which could be projected in a cinema. Sunset
Strip was shown to a public audience for the first
time at the International Animation Festival in Cardiff in
June 1996.
Since then the film has been seen by many thousands of
people all over the world in lots of different settings.
Sunset Strip was chosen by the British Council to
represent British animation at the Retrospective of British
Animation held at Annecy in France in 2001. As well as many
television and cinema screenings, the film has been shown
in nightclubs, at the launch of a fashion store in Hamburg,
at a festival of film music in Singapore, and has featured
in exhibitions at The Barbican, London and at The Norwich
Gallery.
Copyright © Kayla Parker 1996
Kenny Knight's comments © Kenny Knight 1996
First published in the journal Boiling: experimental
animation (1998) Vicky Smith (ed.) (Issue 1 October
1998). London: London Film Makers’ Co-op
Text also supplied to the British Film Institute for the
‘Camera-less animation’ section in Into animation: a
video compilation and teaching guide (2003) Louise
Spraggon, VHS and booklet, with CD-ROM. London: BFI
Education ISBN 1-903786-10-X http://www.bfi.org.uk/education/teaching/intoanimation/