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Title: BEACONS

Reference number: 7272

Date: 1996

Director: d. Chris Dooks and Alex Norris

Sponsor: Scottish Television and The Scottish Film Council [Centenary Reels]

Production company: Digital Cow Productions

Sound: sound

Original format: 16mm

Colour: bwcol

Fiction: fiction

Running time: 15.38 mins

Description: A film about the relationship we have with electrical light.

Information from Chris Dooks, one of the film-makers: "We decided to make a film about the relationship we have with electrical light. But instead of doing a documentary - we made an audio piece first by travelling up and down the country and listening to stories on a) how people light their home and b) if they've had any religious experiences.

We cut the answers up whilst I was a resident artist in a school in Manchester and made a montage of electronic noises, answers to the questions and a sound design that could have won the Sonic Daisy Award if we'd have entered it.

Then we went out and shot images of London and North Yorkshire and stuck them on top of the soundtrack. We shot it on a clockwork camera - a Bolex - usually used for animation purposes which meant we could shoot without permission in a lot of places in London, whipping the camera out for a few seconds here and there.

We shot in The Guardian printing plant in the Docklands exactly two weeks prior to the hour that the IRA blew it apart."
[from Chris Dooks' website, 2008. Website now updated at https://www.chrisdooks.org/ and last accessed 22/04/2024]

Credits: photographed by Andrew Conway
soundtrack Neil Fitzpatrick, Digital Cow Productions, Alex Bradley
composed by Neil Fitzpatrick
sd. rec. Jeremy Curnow
researcher Naomi Liston

voices Auld Reekie Tours, Cosmic Cow Collective, Jock Dalgleish, Graham Dey, Russell Eberest, John Henshaw, David Icke, Malcolm Innes, Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, Andre Tammes, Sarah O'Neill, Sarah Thompson, Paul Wearing

Thanks to Butterfly World, Fergus Cochrane Antiques, Cleveland College of Art, Don Cox, Daylight Studios, Alan Delaney [… et al …]

Made with the financial assistance of Scottish Television and The Scottish Film Council

© Digital Cow Productions 1996

Shotlist: Mixture of images, of night skies, city buildings, ints. of houses. A commentary is given by various people, young and old, male and female. The commentary concerns light, and what it means to them. There are childhood memories, and the importance of light.