Farewell, Hamilton
We’ve done it.
We packed up and left Hamilton behind. It was a day of mixed emotions, but I’d be lying to say we were feeling very sad about it. We had too much on the horizon that we were looking forward to awaiting us in St. Thomas.
In the final couple of weeks in our old home, I decided I was going to make a film that documented those last moments in time: snow falling in the backyard, packing boxes, patching drywall, eating our favourite donuts on the bedroom floor, hanging out around the house for some of the final times.
It culminated in the above product and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
If you’d like to know more about the creative decision-making that went on behind this film, read on.
The Aspect Ratio
I’m no stranger to using a variety of aspect ratios, and I knew before the first shot that I wanted a 4:3 aspect ratio. One of my favourite movies was filmed in this ratio, so emulating that is fun.
You compose your shots differently when you mess with aspect ratios like this, and I’m a really big fan of that. Not much more to it. Something different to catch the eye.
The Cinematography
My love for cinematography doesn’t end at aspect ratios: that’s for sure. I wanted to use this film as an opportunity to break from my normal handheld approach to filmmaking and instead aim for something that was very locked-off, stable, and thoughtfully composed. I wanted the subject of each shot to do the talking, and to do my best to make the camera itself invisible to what was happening.
This was way more challenging than I envisioned. I actually hated having my big, massive tripod (with my too-big camera setup on top of it) bouncing around from room to room in our house for a number of weeks. It was an inconvenience at the best of times, and likely even resulted in me missing shots altogether at other times because I was forced to be slow, methodical, deliberate. There was little room for spontaneity with this approach.
Did it turn out in the end? Sure. I think so. But I definitely had to slip in a few stable-as-I-can-be handheld shots in order to not miss out on absolutely everything I wanted to capture. It didn’t take me long to realize that this is not the proper approach to documenting a family with two young kids if I want to actually have a volume of authentic shots worth remembering.
The Soundtrack
Written and recorded by yours truly. This was actually another impedance on getting this project over the finish line. Shortly after we moved to St. Thomas, I was messing around on my new guitar and developed the main chord progression and melody that you hear throughout the song. From that moment on, I couldn’t get the pairing of that song and this film out of my head. Nothing else would do.
The problem wasn’t so much that I wanted to record my own song (I’ve done that dozens of times): the problem was that I wanted to integrate professional sounding guitar in a style that is also largely unfamiliar to me and nearly beyond my ability to conceptualize and play. It also necessitated the use of new recording technology which brought with it a whole host of issues to resolve.
In terms of the actual vibe and content of the song: It all turned out a little more melancholic than I had imagined it would. As I felt it happening during recording, I decided not to shy away from that. The chord progression change that happens twice throughout the song brings about with it a certain change in atmosphere that makes the sweet parts of the song sweeter, and the sad parts of the song sadder. The wandering melody that comes and goes and crescendos at the end is a fun sprinkling of melody throughout the track like snow across a city street.
Finally, though, I did make it through, and I’m pretty happy with how the song turned out. Could it be better? Always. But at some point in every creative project you suddenly remember that done is better than perfect, and it’s high time to move onto the next thing.
The Editing
There’s nothing particularly challenging or technically difficult in this film. At all. But when I hit a groove with the footage on hand and the soundtrack I’m editing it to, it always feels good and tends to inspire more good decisions.
The synchronization of some of the more sad and empty footage (like the removing of a picture frame that only leaves behind a blank wall where that memory once hung) with the more melancholy moments in the song felt like a really powerful discovery as I was cutting footage. Arranging the footage around the movements of the song is always paramount for me, and the track I ended up writing fit better than I could’ve planned (if I would’ve planned at all).
The return to happier, light-hearted moments that coincide to the more upbeat moments of the song create a really great contrast. I really dig how that all came together.
This film in particular was one of the rare moments when I knew what the ending of the film would be before I even shot it: the leaving behind of the “Welcome to Redrow North [the name of our home]” sign and the shot of the U-Haul pulling away through the front window. As we were packing up, I happened to have it click in my head, and I was pumped to capture that shot in a way that looked on screen exactly like it did beforehand in my head. It’s not really a “clever” moment, but I think it bookends the end of the film really well.
Was the opening shot of this film the most amazing? Not even close. This is rare for me as I’ll always try to open with something really strong. But this time I decided to let it go. The snow falling through the window felt better all on its own.
The intentional exclusion of any sort of credits also felt like a not-normally-but-right-this-time decision. I struggled to settle on the title of “Farewell, Hamilton” as opposed to “Farewell, Redrow North” (knowing that no one would know what the heck that was without explanation) so I just didn’t care to include it. Can’t explain it any more than that. Trust your gut and go for it.
The Stills
I’ve taken a long time to make the switch to shooting almost exclusively in 4K resolution, but I think I’m there now. I still hate giving up extra hard drive space—and my compression settings might be negating the entire purpose of shooting in a higher resolution anyways—but my favourite aspect of shooting beyond 1080p is being able to extract higher resolution still images from the final film.
A 1080p timeline yields the equivalent of a 2 megapixel image. Yikes. But a 4K timeline yields the equivalent of an 8 megapixel image. Still not outstanding, but miles ahead of 1080p, and it certainly makes your video look crisper (if your internet bandwidth can handle it).
To close up this dive into the thinking behind this project, I’ll leave you with some of my favourite moments of this film. Thanks for reading.
Bonus: Black & White Version
I’ve been a bit obsessed with black and white photos lately. You don’t even know the half of it. I decided to do a version of this film in black and white also because… why the heck not? I might like it better than the original, but because I didn’t shoot he original with black and white in mind, it felt wrong to avert away from it. I don’t know. We can have both: why choose?
