Update: now with features about the "making of" linked to each station.
A few years ago, when I was still working for "Visions" in York, I planned a virtual "Stations of the Cross in video art, which was projected outside in various locations in the city of York. We called it the "Via Luminosa", and gave out maps and leaflets which described the artwork. Rather than following the traditional Roman Catholic list of stations, we widened the journey, beginning at Palm Sunday and ending with the resurrection and using only the biblical events, so that those who saw the art would learn more about the events which led up to that first Easter. This year I picked up the project once more, and in these days of lock-down, it seemed appropriate to re-edit the stations, putting music behind, and using them as a Passiontide journey. Richard McVeigh has kindly given permission to use some of his music and the music of his wonderful consort, SW1, to accompany the visuals. This will be a time-limited project. Every day, between the 30th March and Easter Sunday, the 12th April, a new video will appear at noon (or thereabouts). The exception will be Easter Eve. I will release station 13 early, at 3pm on Good Friday. The videos will be taken down on the 13th April so watch them while they are still there, use them for your worship and make your own virtual journey to Jerusalem. I will attempt to post links to each video here, as they appear on a daily basis.You do not need to join Facebook to see them. When it prompts you to log in, click the blue "not now" link and the prompt should disappear.
Update: I didn't want to do this until after Easter Sunday, as I wanted you to simply experience the stations. But here is some information about each station.
Station 1 - Palm Sunday, 30th March.
The Palm Sunday station was originally projected onto a window which had been covered in tracing paper. The donkey footage came from Petra. Malcolm did the "donkey cam" image of his ears whilst actually riding the donkey. He is better at holding on than I am! The image of Christ used as the title on each station came from an old performance of the mystery plays in York. it underwent a fair bit of "photoshopping" (actually I use the open source Gnu Image Manipulation Program to do that...its free!). The icon of Christ on the cross normally hangs on our staircase, although it has industrial velcro on its reverse face so that we can mount it as a processional cross. As the days of Passiontide and Holy Week went on I found it hard to distinguish the opening frames of each station, so started to change the opening titles whist keeping this image as a repeating motif. The introductory bible texts are shown over footage of the streets of the old city of Jerusalem. We have always been fascinated by these tiny narrow passages lined with shops, and often return simply to wander the streets, explore the avenues, film people and places and soak up the atmosphere. The globe is, of course, from NASA. My budget didn't stretch to going into space, but thankfully NASA stuff is free to use.
Station 2 - Betrayal, 31st March.
For the introduction of this station, I used Keynote to animate the crucifix icon. I used to use Adobe After Effects for this kind of thing, but find I get better results in Keynote these days (using the "magic move" transition). I used to use animation of falling notes which I made in After Effects but I was unhappy with the results, so this is stock footage from Videoblocks (who are excellent) The rotating coins and "kisses" are also animated in Keynote and I bought my replica Roman coin in the Yorkshire Museum shop in York.
Station 3 - The Last Supper, 1st April.
The globe behind the cross icon in the introduction to this station was very painstakingly animated in GIMP (see above) around twenty years ago. It is a collage of many holiday snaps. The foot washing footage was shot for the precentor of Peterborough this year, and underwent a little bit of processing in iMovie and Filmora. The new version of iMovie really annoys me. I think they are deliberately making it clunky and annoying so folks upgrade to Final Cut Pro, so I have now swapped to Filmora, which I love as it has lots of quirky effects and photoshop style filters. Most of the last Supper footage itself was shot a very long time ago in my house in York, and I have recycled it for this project. The overflowing wine glass was originally shot by a curate on placement with me for a setting of psalm 23, but it is such a powerful image that we use it a lot for communion.
Station 4 - Agony in the Garden, 2nd April.
I did the introduction to this station and the footage behind the bible verses was shot at the top of the mount of olives, in the convent garden of the Pater Noster chapel; a lovely unspoilt place that feels like a time-machine. Nic Walters shot the main part of this station for the original Via Luminosa project in York where we projected the stations outside around the city. it was originally on a number of stacked TVs inside the window of the Oxfam shop. I think it is tremendously powerful, especially when the hammer comes down and smashes the teacup. I believe Nic did the writing by actually projecting onto the cup, rather than post-processing.
Station 5 - Arrest , 3rd April.
The crown of thorns behind the titles was bought in Jerusalem, and animated using a cake turntable which is why it is a little clunky (annoyingly). The turntable couldn't cope with having so much red fabric over it, and I didn't want to cut the fabric because it is such a lovely colour. If I see a smaller version of the same stuff I will buy a little bit and re-shoot this! The olive tree background is. a heavily processed version of the garden of Gethsemanae olives and all the rest of the figures and items come from the Yorkshire Museum in York. The original station was projected onto a cube standing in the garden of this museum and was viewed through bars.
Station 6 - A Crown of Thorns, 4th April.
The animation behind the crucifix in the opening titles is the angel Gabriel taken from a picture of the annunciation in the Louvre, and animated in After Effects to circle a globe (which cannot be seen because it is behind Jesus). I have added a little post-processing in Filmora to give it the motion blur. The pillars behind the bible text are actually from Constantine's water cistern in Istanbul. The thorns are the ones I bought and put on a turntable, and the rest of the footage was filmed in our back yard a very long time ago. The scourging at the end comes from a very ancient life of Christ film that is now public domain because it is so old.
Station 7 - Pilate Washes his Hands, 5th April.
This station uses quite a bit of ancient public domain footage from the Prelinger Archive. I was trying to give an impression of the environmental and human disasters that we can be tempted to wash our hands of. The central image of pilate washing his hands was shot from beneath a glass table.
Station 8 - Jesus Carries his Cross , 6th April.
The introductory footage behind the prayer was shot in Belfast on the M3. Malcolm was driving. I was pointing a camera through the window. For the footage of the carrying of the cross, Andy "Starbuck" and I got up at a ridiculously early hour to film in the high street in York (Coney Street). At the time empty shopping streets were an eery and unusual sight (not any more!). I didn't have any expensive tripod equipment, so strapped the camera to my bicycle and wheeled it down the street, following Andy.
Station 9 - Simon Lends a hand , 7th April.
The image behind Christ in the opening title shot comes from Petra. I mirrored it in Filmora and placed it behind Jesus. The fountain was taken in Strasburg and processed heavily. Behind the bible texts we have more wonderful shots of those tiny streets in Jerusalem. The hearts and hands images were various people in the Visions community, and if you look carefully in the centre from time to time, two sets of hands appear carrying the cross-bar. One of those is Malcolm, the other is Christian Salvaratnam. I can't remember which program I used to stack all the images up, but it was either After Effects or Keynote. (It is surprising what you can do with presentation software!)
Station 10 - Weeping Women, 8th April
The footage behind "we adore you" was taken on the Nile at sunset. The other footage was taken in Jerusalem, and I experimented with morphing software, creating transitions between the ancient weeping women and the people who weep in Jerusalem today. The footage of feet and steps was taken just outside the Damascus Gate. Muslims, Jews, Christians, and those of other faiths, and from many nations all went through that gate. You could sometimes tell who they were by their clothes, but never by their shoes. Their feet all looked the same, a reminder of our common humanity, beneath all the prejudice and angst.
Station 11 - Jesus is Stripped , 9th April.
The footage under the prayer was animated in After Effects, using space footage from NASA and solar flare effects. The stripping footage was taken in our back yard in York. it was Malcolm's idea to show each section twice (once positive, and once negative) and to add many extra layers of clothes to make the sequence longer and more dramatic. For the final shot I wrote "Naked indignity, dressed in red scars, by his stripes we are healed" on Malcolms back in lipstick. We felt that this would be more powerful than trying to fake scars that might look fake afterwards. (This is because we've had problems faking them before. But I'll tell you about that later!)
Station 12 - Nailed to the Cross, 9AM, Good Friday
The opening titles were displayed over NASA footage here. Nic Walters gave me the footage of Jesus and the nails, which was originally used in Vision services, before the "Via" project was ever conceived. The cross image at the end was also from an old set of York mystery plays, a number of stills were simply lined up as a slide presentation and exported as a movie before being processed. When I shot the slides I never considered that they would work this well when stuck together.
Station 13 - Jesus dies on the Cross, 3PM, Good Friday
Malcolm was a star to let me shoot this footage. It is quite old, and was originally conceived as a loop for communion services. We discovered so much by shooting this! Firstly, I almost dislocated Malcolms shoulder fixing him to the cross. (thankfully I didn't, but it made me realise, when I read that the Turin shroud body showed evidence of a dislocated shoulder, that this was a point in favour of it possibly being genuine rather than a fake). The cross itself was the one St Michael le Beflrey normally use for their Good Friday services. It is actual size which is great. And we put a black curtain behind it for a backdrop. We stuck short nails on Malcolm's arms with blue tac but the blue tac melted under the spotlight and the nails fell off. There is some "out-take"footage of them falling on the ground! For the crown of thorns (this was before I ever visited Israel), I made a crown from Berberis thorn and then snipped the inside thorns off with pliers. And now we come to the story of the scars. I got into a bit of trouble about this! I decided that Marmite would be a good substitute for dried blood, and it did look good when we applied it, what I didn't realise was that it would then not come off again, and removing it afterwards was a bit like waxing legs. After that I was banned from ever using Marmite again for a photo shoot! The final section was edited this year . I took the icon of Jesus used in the opening titles and "photoshopped" it using GIMP, changing each figure ever so slightly so that they were unique, and placing them over a cross that I had drawn. I saved them as png images (as png can cope with transparency) which meant I could overlay them on stock footage of lightning which I then slowed down to be more dramatic.
new - extra mini station "...and so we wait"
This station was made using Keynote. Once again the two images were taken from mystery plays.
Station14 - Resurrection. Happy Easter!
This station involved a lot of editing this year, as I wasn't happy with the original version (but I feel it was worth it). I used footage we shot whilst on a punt in Venice Verte in France, added motion blur, and put it behind the words to the first prayer. The empty tomb is in Jerusalem, in the garden of Mary and Martha's house, and the footage of Jesus spinning was filmed at the same time as the baptism footage, a very very long time ago, so actually Malcolm is a bit younger in the resurrection than in the crucifixion. The butterflies were taken in tropical world in Leeds, and mirrored because the camera wasn't steady (in days before stabilisation software). The egg was made in GIMP and originally used as part of an Easter art installation which was originally projected in St Martins in Coney street. The funny thing about that particular projection was that the DVD player that we were using to send the image to the projector threw a wobbly one night and projected the Tesco logo all night on the wall. Drunken passers by probably thought the church had got a sponsorship deal! The dog running down the beach in Ireland was my first dog, Dougal, who has now gone. He simply loved playing fetch! The olives were taken halfway up the Mount of Olives on a windy day in 2016. There is also footage of a large plant (or small tree) placed in front of a window. This tree is a seedling from the Hiroshima peace tree. It was at the centre of the blast and looked utterly dead just afterwards, but the fact that it came back to life was a symbol of hope and peace to those whose lives had been shattered and those who had lost loved ones. It still fills me with hope now. Happy Easter everyone!
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