Spirit Leaves Tasmania
This short movie was mainly shot from a low fence at the
side of the river Mersey in Devonport in Tasmania. It shows the
ferry the "Spirit of
Tasmania" leaving Devonport enroute for Melbourne,
Australia. There are two ferries which make this
overnight journey and they pass each other in the
middle of Bass Strait each night. The trip takes ten
to twelve hours.
Attempting to film the "Spirit" leaving Devonport is nearly
impossible. Though there are long stretches of river front,
and though the ferry leaves every night at the same time,
the locals are a peculiar and tiresome lot, who are much
addicted to revving cars and loud conversation and outright
film sabotage. The night before I took this video I was
mid-filming on the other side of the river when this chap
appeared out of the dark, examined me closely as I filmed
with my eye pressed hard to the viewfinder... and
immediately launched into a prolonged rant about how he had
once sailed on the ship in question, but had found the food
not to his liking. His Pythonesque blatherings were of
course duly immortalised on the soundtrack, thereby
rendering it useless. The next night, I tried the other
side of the river. Precisely at the focal point of the
first main shot a young girl (who can be heard on the
soundtrack) walked up along the river bank and stopped
directly in front of the camera for two seconds and then
walked off. This film is what remains.
This video was shot with a Sony TRV230 video camera and
edited with iMovie on a 867mhz, 12inch Apple Mac PowerBook.