Hard to believe I have been here on Shodoshima for 33 days! So much has happened it feels like six months, but time is rapidly running out and very soon I am going to have to stop shooting & stay indoors, editing & finishing sound & score for my two film projects.

Yesterday was one of those great days shooting – I headed up into the mountains with the aim of capturing just one shot, a motion controlled tracking shot filmed at macro level, with super shallow depth of field… I found some beautiful moss and after eight takes was sure I had two or three that would work… frame grab below:

So I packed up & planned to head home, back to editing & staying focused on the deadline… but around a corner I came across the monkeys again! I did a search and apparently there are five nomadic groups of macaques on Shodoshima, and as this was definitely a different group to the previous ones I had seen I just had to stop & take some photos… and record some of their unreal sounds!

This one literally walked up to about 5 metres away from me, posed & paused until I took this photo & then wandered off…

It seems there are always dramas in the macaque world, every few minutes there would be an outburst of confrontation, all of which I recorded sound for maybe 20 minutes and some I captured footage of – heres a great scuffle/play fight that broke out (shot with my Canon s100 so please excuse variable picture quality, but recorded ok with MKH8040 ORTF to Sound Devices 744) – warning! Sound may scare domestic pets!

The tribe were definitely moving in a clear direction – I recorded for about 20 minutes until they had all headed off, but I got to thinking that the best way to record them might be to go ahead & plant the mics, rather than creep up & slowly scare them away…. So I drove down the road maybe 10 minutes, to a lookout and set up my mics and left them recording….

I waited for maybe 20 minutes and could hear them in the distance, but they didnt seem to be getting closer… So I set up a couple of timelapse shots out of ear shot of the mics and set them going, click…. click… click….

After another 20 minutes they still didnt seem any closer, but there were some crows making a racket so I moved the mics up to another lookout nearby

The tree up in top left had maybe eight crows in it, and they seemed to be having a party, jumping off the tree into the wind, swooping around & back… I recorded sound for a while, and then went & got my 5D and shot some beautiful silhouette footage of them. The frame grab below is from a shot where four of them jumped off & flew in a big loop, following almost identical trajectories

Having shot & recorded my fill of crows I put the mics back where I had them earlier and was just checking shots on the 5D when I heard a rustle behind me, and there was one of the macaques!! My mics were already rolling, but I quickly set up the 5D and started shooting video as the whole tribe came wandering past!!!

I was shooting with my 70-200mm lens, and was mainly was focused trying to get close ups… So occasionally I would get a little fright when I realised one of the macaques was quite close to me. They were wary of me, but the bigger males also didn’t seem too scared of me, and this particular one almost got a little too close – for a moment I wasn’t sure whether I should keep shooting or scare him away from my recorder!!

I suspect I was lucky I didnt have any food in my recorder bag… or was he just checking my levels? Arigatou macaque-san

I found this temple ages ago, virtually via google earth, and flickr. Finding it in reality was quite a challenge, but find it I did today and set a timelapse running, which equated to chilling out for 2+ hours…. There is rain predicted for tomorrow so clouds are around, but they aren’t fast moving (yet) so I found some shade & read for a while on my iPad….

The approach to Nishotaki, temple #42 on the Shodoshima map is via a farm road near Ikeda Port, heading up into the hills passing through olive and fruit trees, the road slowly getting more and more narrow… Eventually it is single lane & slowly zig zagging its way up a very steep mountain… Reaching the small carpark the road is lined with stone lanterns, as are the steps leading up to the temple…. THe irony of lugging cameras, tripods, slider and motion control unit up such ancient steps is not lost on me….

Part of the temple is built into the rocks, but the photos I had virtually recce’d were all about the view of the Seto Inland Sea and the way the light strikes that upper temple

This is a frame from the timelapse I shot, simply breathtaking to view in real time

My 5Dmkiii enjoying the sunlight & the view, and angled away from the harsh late afternoon sun…

While i was relaxing on the steps I had also been listening out for visitors, as nothing gets in the way of a perfectly framed timelapse better/worse than another visitor who has as much right (or more) to be there… After an hour or so, a group of women could be heard making their way through the complex… but well ahead of them came the priest, we had seen each other when I arrived and he had granted me permission to shoot, but on his way up the steps he stopped and we had a brief chat, in that funny way when you both want to communicate but neither can really speak the others language. But I was prepared for such situations and had written a brief letter explaining who I was, what I was doing & asking for permission to film (Arigatou Hidemi san for translating it!) – he read it, smiled, “New Zealando?’ and then in broken english explained he was about to perform a fire ceremony for the group of women. I gestured at my camera, he smiled & nodded, and I followed him in to set up to shoot what was a very beautiful and personal ceremony.

As a film maker dependent on found situations & opportunities, I so appreciate such generosity. I was very careful to stop shooting when the main ceremony was over & one by one each woman was blessed. And I would never use any footage where the priest was blessing specifics for the women.

And I have changed my post schedule so I WILL have a rough cut to show this priest…. and the priest from Shirinji! I fear as a gaijin/outsider it would be very, very, very, very, very easy to misinterpret their generosity and potentially mis-represent them in ways that they would not appreciate. This cannot happen. As with my workshop, I believe collaboration is inclusive and it is vitally important to insure your collaborators are onboard and proud to be involved. I have worked on a few films where that was not the case & the taste is bitter and long lasting. And willfully I shall preclude it from ever being part of my oeuvre….

I left one of my GoPro cameras inside one of the stone lanterns in the carpark, shooting the sunset…. the other is hidden behind a guard rail on a very tight U bend half way up Chosi gorge…. Early start tomorrow to go retrieve them both, snooze while the data copies and then see what they captured! God/Buddha/Jah bless USB batteries! Those GoPro cameras are next to useless without them, but with them? A four or six hour timelapse is no sweat!

“We’ll change banks when I say so!”

“Look I am doing this filter sweep as fast as I can!”

“Humans have no idea about rhythm, I’ll show you how to stridulate!”

sustain via a tiny ronin!