Filming 'The Way of Tea' Exhibition

Filming the exhibition posed a number of challenges. 'The Way of Tea' exhibition was held at Kube art gallery, in Poole, where the artists wanted to create the sense of a journey through a tea garden.

As part of a tea ceremony, the artist's walk the spectator around the meandering tea garden, in order to gain a sense of calm. Therefore, I had to hold the camera in my hand for much of the filming, posing a challenge to keep the frames still and not to have blurred images.

The tea ceremony invites the spectator to sit with the artist's in the tea hut. The spectator is asked to take their shoes off and the artist's bathe your feet in water. A complete sense of calm is achieved when the artist's take the spectator through the ceremony; massaging your back and sitting together with closed eyes. In order to portray the human connection made through the ceremony, I positioned the camera to the side of the artist's and myself whilst this process of calm was taking place.

Filming the tea garden was also rather challenging, as it was made up of tea cups and saucers, which looked somewhat small when placed on the floor in a large room. In order to film the tea garden in a way in which, would be visually effective on screen, I used the macro setting on the camera for part of the filming. Thus, allowing a close up shot of the tea cups and saucers and making it visually clear that the tea cups were filled with soil and growing grass.

The tea cups and saucers being white in colour and the floor being the same, often made it difficult to film from a distance, as the tea cups seemed to blend with the floor, creating a blurred, indistinct image. Therefore, remaining fairly close to the tea cups whilst filming seemed most feasible.