PERSPECTIVE - Bas Hordijk
Bas Hordijk (b.1996) is a Dutch photographer and filmmaker, obsessed by the human figure in its surroundings. With his eye for composition, he captures the fleeting moments of romance and delicacy within the chaos of everyday life. His graduation film 'Perspective' (2019) won him a Filmfonds Wildcard at the Nederlands Film Festival in Utrecht.
‘Perspective’ is a short film about humankind and its place in the bigger picture. The film explores the thematic and visual aspects of Hordijk’s street photographs. In conversation with GUP New, he reveals the creative process behind ‘Perspective’.
Why is the film named ‘Perspective’?
After taking many street photographs for five years, I started to question my motivation behind doing it. By analysing the photographs, I quickly noticed many thematic elements: I was apparently trying to simplify and understand better my surroundings through the use of the camera. Ultimately, by observing and simplifying my environment, I’m able to make choices that are better for myself and the people around me.
With this film, I initially aimed to use 3D animation techniques which would give me the possibility to capture the world from space without having to be launched by a rocket. I was out of budget for that, but I still wanted to create a journey in which our existence is simplified by literally putting it into perspective (hence the title). Seeing the earth from space, some feel trapped, others get strength from this. To me, however, it feels very liberating in some sense.
The film is shot vertically and has a similar format to a mobile screen. Could you please explain what was your intention behind choosing this format?
Many of my earlier street photographs were shot vertically. It appeared to me that in horizontal images, it speaks about a relationship between the people, themselves and the world. Whereas a vertical image says more about the relationship between the individual and something higher; call it search for meaning, religion, big philosophical questions like how and why. It only made sense to make this film vertical as well, 2:3 just like my photographs. I wanted to hint at the upwards motion throughout the film not only with the visual compositions and movements but musical composition as well.
Since you are both a photographer and filmmaker, what relation do you see between the two mediums?
When taking photographs, for me, it’s all about finding things out there in the real world that resonate with me on some level. With photography, I just go out and shoot while with filmmaking, especially animation, it’s about creating new worlds that exist only inside of my own head. In filmmaking, I allow myself to have more control over the end product than in photography. That’s probably just the nature of how much more calculated things need to be when dealing with a film production.
Also, inside 3D animation software applications you start out with a blank canvas. All that you put into this canvas is just perfect calculations done by a computer. To make something lively and organic in this environment, you’ll need to recreate the imperfections of the real world yourself. All this makes a spontaneous and intuitive workflow more difficult in animation than in photography, where all imperfections are already there for you to work with.
Did the film ‘Perspective’ eventually help you understand and explore in more depth the way you photograph?
Not necessarily. Although I think that the deeper understanding of my photography work allowed me to create ‘Perspective’. I did see this film as a turning point, or a last page of a chapter, allowing me to move on to a new direction in my personal work. Now that I'm done with school, I will inevitably see the world around me in new ways. My perspective on life is changing, resulting in subtle alternations in the work that I make.
Do you feel that by creating the movie, you found something in the process of filmmaking that you perhaps miss in photography?
No. I think the two are perfectly different from each other and I wouldn't want to change any of that. For me, filmmaking and photography complement each other nicely, they both have their own unique ways of expression, that’s why I like to do both.
HERE BELOW OTHER IMAGES FROM BAS BODY OF WORK
