Hazel Boot - Home (a pinhole music video)

I write today to present my latest music video, recorded last Sunday in Sydney and edited above the Tasman Sea after I collaborated with the beautiful New Zealand singer / songwriter Hazel Boot.
Hazel, originally from Canterbury, is currently based in Melbourne and wrote her song 'Home' in response to the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010 and 2011.

"It's about feeling at home in your own skin and about feeling really grounded" Hazel explains. "It's about being in an unsettling experience but knowing that all is well."

We recorded the video on the Sydney coastline, looking across the Tasman sea to our home in Aotearoa / New Zealand. I edited the video the next day, while flying back to Christchurch in the true spirit of Hazel's song. The video is unique in the fact that it is entirely shot with a pinhole camera, and no digital special effects or image manipulation techniques have been applied. I believe it to be one of the very first pinhole videos ever made.

Shooting the pinhole video in Sydney. Here I am filtering light through my fingers
onto the lens in order to create and manipulate the various lens flares.
Photo | Aliscia Young Photography

Making a Pinhole Video

I hadn't made a pinhole camera since experimenting with them at Massey University in 2003. Back then it was a big effort to get a picture. You'd find an old Milo or Biscuit tin, put a pinhole in one end, go into a darkroom and install a piece of photo paper. Then you had to tape over the pinhole, carry the bulky biscuit-tin-camera to where your subject matter was, take the tape off the pinhole and GUESS the exposure - anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes, then tape over the pinhole again, take it back to the darkroom and develop the image by hand - and chances were you got the exposure wrong and now half a day was gone.

A milo-tin pinhole self portrait I took in Wellington, 2003.

But when you got it right the results could be epic. The pinhole creates an infinite depth of field, meaning whatever distance from the lens, the focus was equal. Light would play with your image in ways digital effects can't quite grasp. If the pinhole wasn't perfectly circular or the focal length quite right, the results would expose beyond expectations time and time again.

Then digital cameras came out. Then later even better digital cameras came out with big sensors that were super sensitive to light. A distant cousin of mine told me last year that apparently you could turn a digital camera into a pinhole camera if you tried and I never forgot that conversation. A digital pinhole photo - one that you could see the results immediately and in colour. That I had to try!

After converting my expensive professional Canon camera into the most basic photography elements - with a drill, tinfoil and sellotape, I began experimenting with digital pinhole photos with mixed results. It then dawned on me that my camera recorded HD video… imagine a pinhole video… would it be possible? was there going to be enough light through a pin sized hole to keep up a video frame rate? My Canon 5D Mark II is known for its low light ability and by amping up the ISO, in bright sunlight, pinhole video finally became a reality.

Hazel and I checked the results as we went, as with pinhole photography you never quite know what will happen. You can see the tinfoil taped to the front of my 'digital pinhole camera'.
Photo | Aliscia Young Photography

For Hazel's video, I wanted to make it entirely with this pinhole camera of mine. I've used a mix of time-lapse pinhole exposures and pinhole video. For some of the shots I have experimented with more than one pinhole, up to five on one shot. Not only does this let more light in, but it created super cool layering and sun-flare effects that I could never achieve through digital means. While shooting Hazel and I would check out the footage and the results just kept surprising us in true pinhole photography style.

And so this video is entirely recorded through a pinhole camera. Aside basic editing, absolutely no special effects, color grading or image manipulation has taken place digitally. The result… well you can judge for yourself.