Sean t. Hanley

I’m happy to announce that I’ve started principal photography on Hindsight, my BFA thesis film!

Because the film is a documentary, I wanted to start shooting as soon as possible in order to have the best chance at getting all the necessary footage. As I’ll be covering an entire year of life in Marlborough,  I wanted to start getting some winter exteriors now, so then I’ll know what I need for next winter. Unfortunately, the recent spring-like temperatures in New England got me worried that all the snow would be gone when I got down there, but hey, I would just have to shoot for the Spring section of the film.

So I packed my car full of camera equipment and drove down to Marlborough, Connecticut. The drive from Cambridge is one I know well as I made it multiple times this summer. It usually takes me about 2 hours.

My original plan was to create a production Vlog of every shooting weekend, but for some reason or another, the Flipcam that I took with me wasn’t working. This was in fact devastating to me because I wanted to be able to record my first shoot for this blog. I resorted to using my camera phone.

This was the first picture I took.  I stopped in Framingham for a bowl of Cheerios and a Vitamin Water.   On the way down, I listened to a RadioLab episode about Morality.

My plan for the weekend was to scope out the areas that I wanted to shoot on Friday, and then shoot all day on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  Locations included: Lake Terramuggus/Blish Park in the center of town, the walking paths behind the elementary school, and the Salmon River if I had time.

My goal for the shoot was to capture these areas in which I spent lots of time as a wee little kid.  Our house was not  far from both the elementary school and Blish Park, so my parents used to take me there often.  I learned to swim on Lake Terramuggus, and we used to walk our dog Baillie on the paths behind the school.  I could talk for ages about the memories that I have of these areas, so I think I might save that for another entry.  I’ll now get to the fun details of shooting on two 16mm cameras simultaneously…by yourself.

After meeting some ice fishermen on Friday afternoon, I woke up at dawn on Saturday to shoot them fishing on the lake.  They told me that I could find lots of guys ice fishing on Saturday and Sunday mornings, so I got there early in order to set up.  However, they all must have been at some ice fishing convention since no one showed up on Saturday at all.  I found myself sitting in my car, along at the lake, hoping the rest of the weekend wasn’t going to be like this.  I spent the rest of the day at the lake working on timelapses of areas around Blish Park.

Sunday:
Feeling like I hadn’t truly got everything I wanted at the park I decided to return and give it another look around.  Turns out that Sunday went much better than Saturday.  There were a few ice fishermen out on the lake, and lots of families taking their kids to the playscape and I think I got some good shots.  It looks a lot different from when I used to play on it.  They recently rebuilt most of it.  It was a large town project, and you can view some photos of it here.  My dad helped build the original structure, so that night I called him and we talked about the new features the town added.

This is one of the two Bolex 16mm cameras that I brought down. This one has a Tobin Animation Motor driving it, which allows me to shoot my timelapses. Basically you can set it to take a frame ever few seconds, or every few minutes. The challenge was monitoring this camera, while at the same time going off and shooting other footage with a regular spring-wound Bolex.

Monday:
I honestly did not feel like shooting anymore on Monday. I had already shot 4 out of the 6 100ft rolls that I brought with me, but I still wanted to get some shots of the woods behind the elementary school so I drove over there. I waited a few minutes in my car, deliberating if I wanted to hike out into the woods or just drive back to Boston. I kicked myself in the butt and said I needed to take a look, and I thank myself now that I did.

I found a cascading stream that I had never seen before and got a lot of great shots of little icicle formations.  I finished off my two rolls and headed back to the car, exhausted after a long weekend of shooting in the cold.

I realized that I had no images of myself doing any shooting, so I set up my cell phone on the roof of my car and took this awkward “end of the day” picture. I promise that later blog entries will have better photos.

Overall I would say it was a good first weekend.  It was honestly very frustrating during its start, but got better and better as it went on.  It was good to get down to Marlborough and think more about the project.  I now have some preliminary footage to look out and determine where I’d like to go next.

As this weekend would not have been possible without the help from my friends back home, I’d like to thank them in this post.  I think I’ll do this regularly in these entries.  To Amy Nocton and Jason Courtmanche for housing me, to the Ives for letting me borrow their ladder, to Mr. and Mrs. Lovallo for letting me shoot off their back porch, to Dana Lovallo for an excellent visit at UCONN, and to Devan Brancard and her family for a wonderful meal on Sunday evening.  Thank you!

Part celebration, and part eulogy, Hindsight will be a 16mm endeavor that documents life in my hometown. It has been a year since my family moved from Marlborough, Connecticut, and as more time passes, the town becomes more inaccessible to me. I spent the first eighteen years of my life growing up in that community, though I find myself having trouble referring to it as my home. As my friends move away and the town changes, my presence in the town fades with it. All this makes me wonder: doesn’t this happen to everyone? Is a home a state of mind or a physical place? I feel as if I should move on from my life in Marlborough, as I know it is something I will never encounter again, but for some reason I’m apprehensive.

As comfortable as I am living in Boston, where I have friends and family, why do I feel this urge to drive two hours down to Connecticut for a weekend? I believe it is something inside of me that won’t let me forget about Marlborough. The need to explore this idea of home led to the creation of my BFA Practicum project.

Over the course of the next year and half, I will be traveling down to Marlborough to document life in the town over the course of the four seasons. I wish to capture the essence of the town, and what it means to live there. At the same time I will be revisiting some of the significant locations of my childhood, now with a 16mm film camera to record the experience. At the same time, I’ll be sorting through the hours and hours of VHS, Hi8, and MiniDV video footage taken by both my parents and myself, searching for and reliving moments from my past. I hope to then juxtapose those mediated memories of the past, with the 16mm film footage of the present. In the end, I hope to create a visual record of my life in the town as it was and as it is now.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CAMBRIDGE, MA - Local hero, Sean Hanley, has announced the prototype of his newest invention - The Electronic Notebook. A device so miraculous, pilgrims are traveling far and wide to see what miracles it brings. The electronic notebook, says Hanley, will revolutionize the way that individuals share and store information. As a filmmaker and photographer, Hanley claims that his invention will display his most recent materials for the public to see. Anonymous sources also say that the notebook will be used to update both friends and strangers alike about Hanley’s newest film, his Bachelor of Fine Arts Practicum project.

It’s been well known that for the past month, Hanley has been working on preproduction for his film, tentatively titled “Hindsight,” but now all those interested can visit his electronic notebook and find out the latest. He will be creating production blogs all throughout the shooting and editing process as a means of self reflection, but also because he believes it will be fun. Video updates should be coming along within the next few weeks.

Hanley would like to thank fellow gentlemen inventor Michael Fowler for his diligence in seeing that this notebook meet it’s completion deadline.

All inquiries can be sent via post to - sean_hanley@emerson.edu