In Pakistan

Ozair Rao

It seems like there’s no middle ground when Ozair Rao asks people about happiness in Karachi.

Working with a simple timeline, I define moments to call up flickr images as this screen grab shows. The challenge is that now we have created a customised interface I can’t immediately see what will result from these combinations. To do that I deliver a script to the developer and he has to code that script onto the interface he has made me. It’s rather a primitive working method, and  it’s meant that things have moved slower than I’d hoped. But it’s proving interesting to be experimenting in a very new territory.

Before the advent of HTML5 — the latest version of the web coding language — video sat on the web in a player separate from other web data. It was  rather like a TV screen in the corner that isn’t hooked up to the broadband. In HTML5 video in now encoded into the page — so you can make links between a point on a video timeline or a place within a frame in the same way that a hyperlink allows a connection between a word and another place on the web.

Web video can then now be ‘mashed-up’ with other web content. My project looks at how I can use flickr and twitter content as documentary material, and how I can effectively combine that live content with video in a new kind of montage. There are lots of challenges. How do you need to frame things to be sure that the content that appears tomorrow or next year will continue to make sense? How do you work with or around the random and X-rated elements that are bound to appear. (Re random, I’m thinking I can signpost the search terms I am using. Re X-rated; I might just have to give a warning. )

You can see in this still of Mongolia footage how montage here is a spatial rather than a temporal device. The montage is also live rather than fixed. At the same time I’m trying to figure out how to edit the original videos leaving space so that they will make sense once combined with these others elements. There is a lot going on, and it’s tricky to hold the different aspects in mind simultaneously.

In a way the method, though painstaking, seems apt. As I experiment with the basic building blocks of cinema, I’m reminded of an earlier era of film-making — when you had to draw visual effects onto film with a chinagraph pen, and then wait to see what they would look like when they came back from being developed at the lab. I’m hoping the results, once I get there, will be fruitful.

Meanwhile, I would like to note my apologies to the film-makers who have sent me material for the long wait. I do hope they will feel it was worth it.

Peru

Irma Luz Poma Canchumani

Appreciation for just being alive is a recurring theme when Irma Luz Poma Canchumani talks to people about happiness in Peru.

In Scotland

Julian Cheatle

Inner-happiness is the theme when Julian Cheatle interviews people in Glasgow.

In Wales

Cath Lewis, Danae Hunter, Mandy Rose
Work, and the lack of it, get in the way of happiness for some interviewees in Cardiff.

In Trinidad

John Barry
Talk turns to God when John Barry asks passers-by about happiness in a Trinidad park.

In Argentina

Maria Rosa Andreotti
There’s philosophical reflection and intense emotion in Maria Rosa Andreotti’s recordings in Argentina.

I’ve been trying out combining the video sequences with other feeds. The tool makes Flickr, Wikipedia, Twitter available as well an enabling you to add annotation and subtitling. It’s fascinating working with it, being able so readily to juxtapose the video with other content on the page.  I’ll post some content soon.

Meanwhile, I’m happy to report that The Are you happy? Project is included as work-in-progress in the Jean Rouch International Film Festival in Paris.

Petya Nakova, Nina Pehlivanova 

To the surprise of the filmmakers there’s optimism that things will be better for the next generation in Bulgaria.