Films for Our Project

Jenise Treuting, our collaborator on amid the noise (also Jason’s sister and official namer of So Percussion!) will be in Vermont this summer with us. She’ll be integrating film of trains in Japan - where she lives and works - with footage that is taken in VT. We asked to her talk a bit about some of the work she’s done with us already:

work slow life - from amid the noise

“I took this footage at Chayama station on the Eiden line in Kyoto on my way home from dinner out one night a couple of summers ago. As I was walking to the station, I could hear the bells at the train crossing. I ran to make the train, but got to the platform just as it was pulling out. I sat there sweaty and irritated for a second before I actually noticed what was going on on the platform across the tracks. I set the camera up next to me on the bench, looking at it as little as possible so I wouldn’t be noticed. I still wish I had put the camera down just a couple more centimeters to the right…

The video for Work Slow Life is one of the earlier pieces I did with So. It’s not all that typical of what we’ve done since - it’s the most simply constructed, literally fade in, fade out. It also came together incredibly easily. When I lined the video and audio tracks up so that the train pulled out of the station as the piece ended, all these other moments just fell into place - certain notes line up with someone walking into frame or crossing their legs or standing up.

I’m a sucker for the earliest Lumeire films - the unscripted ones of workers pouring out of the factory gates after work and the train pulling into the station - which is why I suppose I’m partial to this one. (And I love the fact that it’s the balding “salary man” who’s fixing his hair in the mirror on the station wall.)”