For this week’s Something for the Weekend Music Video we have a song and performance from the filmmaker herself, Shauna Osborne-Dowle, with her timeless tale of loss, fear and belonging that is Ankor. Shauna spoke to D+CFilm about the video.
Ankor is not a traditional folk-song but an original one written and composed by myself, using the name of Shauna Motalue. So its a ‘new’ song, with all the romance of traditional folk, which often tells the stories of ordinary people and their working lives.
Ankor is the story told from a woman’s perspective, it’s that of the ‘wait at home’ fisherwife, whose fella has to brave the wave for a living. It’s a timeless story which is as appropriate today as it ever was. The title Ankor is the Cornish language spelling for anchor, and refers to being rooted or belonging.
I wanted to base this story around the port of Falmouth, which is my home town. The town has seen many changes in recent years, as has the seafaring industry which sustains it; going from sail fishing and oyster dredging, through steam to factory boats, super-tanker repairs and re-fueling, oil rig anchorage, and presently it seems to be moving into luxury cruise liners and pleasure yachting. I wanted to capture these changes in a timelapse effect, from early drawings and paintings into still photographs and then a natural progression into the use of archive film.
I sourced the footage from The South West Film and Television Archive in Plymouth, where I did work-experience while studying for my MA in Television Production at University Collage Falmouth, 2006.
The archive was fantastically helpful and I got to view and edit the old 16mm film news reels myself, using a Steenbeck, which was great fun. The selection process was a combination of surprise subjects which I didn’t know existed until I researched the Archive database and a searched for events that I remember had happened in the harbour.
Many of the news reels which I selected were possibly events I had viewed on the local news as a child! The live action footage cut into the film forms the nub of the timeless folk-story.
I began to make Super 8 films and animations to use as sets, scenery and dream sequences while studying for a BA in Visual and Performing Arts (Theatre) at Brighton University, graduating in 1995.
After college I went into songwriting and was a singer songwriter for many years playing at open mics in both Cornwall and Brighton. Music videos have been a crucial part of my development as a filmmaker.
My first music video was made for another of my songs Cowboy Blues, in 2002, using a VHS editing system at Truro College -how quickly things change! Then In Mini DV I made some music videos for a fellow singer/songwriter; Emily Jones and recorded some live performances for the band John.E.Vistic.
Music video are fun to make and can be highly imaginative, to this day I still really enjoy cutting film image to music.
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