Leaves Like Feathers

Leaves Like Feathers A neo-Impressionist film. A painterly film. Leaves Like Feathers was shot mostly with an iPhone Pro Max manipulated to blow out the backgrounds (sunlight) to white, and cause foreground subjects to materialize, dissolve, flash, and ‘morph’ into the light—when shot with a moving camera. The subjects are plants, mostly ferns, which are sometimes described as having ‘leaves like feathers.’ This quote came to mind while I was shooting the film: Having condensed his vision to a small area of the surface of his own lily pond, Claude Monet realized that the fragment could indeed suggest not merely the whole pond, but the wider world, extending beyond it and fundamentally it seems, his ever-deepening vision of the wholeness of life. Julian Beecroft In post-production, the initial footage was slowed down considerably using Final Cut Pro software’s Smooth Slo-Mo capability. The first sequence of Leaves Like Feathers uses a composition by Claude Debussy, who is often described as an Impressionist composer: Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun (Ensemble Arr., 1894). The result is a dreamscape—ethereal, idyllic, with maybe an angelic presence. (Or is it quantum-physics-like?) Debussy’s music transitions into location sound, slowed-down and enhanced—aleatory, alien. Though the visual style is still the same, all is now disquieting, menacing—somewhat ‘hellish’ even. Next is a sped-up sequence derived from the transitioned slo-mo (not the original) footage. It comes across as a hectic bird-like swarm—like wings slapping at the screen. Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun (“a sleep filled with visions”) concludes in the film’s three-shot coda. The first two are of a greenhouse window whose transparency is compromised with frost, condensation and clear rivulets of water. At centre frame is a vivid flash of red. The initial impression is of a bird thrashing non-stop against the glass. The third shot, in telephoto, verifies that it is a Canadian flag, with red leaf, blowing freely in the wind l