EMPIRE OF STONE – BEST OF THE ‘ANCIENT SKIES’ TIMELAPSE from PMW Creative on Vimeo.
Grant Wakefield is a cameraman and part of a team called PMW Creative who provide “cutting edge specialist cinematography for commercials, corporates, feature films, special venue films, large format presentations and high-definition video” … in their own words.
The clip above is, again in Grant’s own words: “[a]Compilation of the best of the material from the ANCIENT SKIES pre-production shoots. Designed principally as a showcase for the motion control digital timelapse systems, when masked to 2.35:1 aspect ratio the piece seemed to take on a proper ‘film’ feel….” I couldn’t have put it better myself.
It is all too easy when watching short clips like this the amount of work that is involved in planning, getting to, setting up and then having the patience to wait for the right conditions in order to get footage like this. Grant has put the miles in and come up with great results and I hope the project works really well. I hope that he had as much joy in filming at these sites as we did.
For more information on this project and others, click on the links above or here: http://www.pmwcreative.org/
Less than 12 metres across, the Stone Circle at Duloe in the east of Cornwall is the smallest in the county. However, the eight gleaming white quartz stones have a presence all their own and give this circle a unique quality that I don’t think is repeated anywhere else.
Interestingly, the adjoining farm is named Stonetown and first recorded as such in 1329 but the circle itself does not have any reference before 1858.
I shot the footage from which these screenshots are taken in December 2005. Could someone please tell me what lambs were doing around at this time of the year? Made for some nice shots, though.
“It’s partly because we tend to look out for big and impressive monoliths that important signs of our ancestors’ day-to-day lives can sometimes pass unnoticed. Here at Roughtor on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, the remains of a Bronze age village is almost lost in the landscape. But a closer look reveals the true scale of a site, which was probably home to large numbers of people”.
That is how Rupert presents the site in the film and certainly, once you start looking at the rather untidy looking gatherings of rocks scattered over the lower slopes of the Northern side of the tor, it is wonderful how the houses and enclosures of a very substantialContinue reading »
English Heritage have launched a wonderful website completely devoted to English prehistoric Rock Art. Going by the acronym ERA (English Rock Art) the site has been established in order to
” … promote greater enjoyment of rock art; inspire new understanding of this intriguing archaeological material; encourage direct involvement with the recording process; and inform effective management and conservation of a unique cultural resource.”
At the moment, the site seems to concentrate mainly on sites in the Northumberland area but new discoveries seem to be coming in fast and the aim is to extend the database to cover all of England. Some of the photography is truly inspired and it is worth a visit just to browse the imagery.
Rupert and I certainly wish we’d been aware of some of the newer discoveries before we set out to film Standing with Stones. However, we did love the art at Achnabreck and Cairnbaan.
