The Time It Takes (2013)

In 2011, Katrina received individual artist funding from Creative Scotland to make this single screen work, filmed on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides and inspired by human lives and relationships in the landscape, past and present. ‘The Time It Takes ‘is a screendance by Katrina McPherson and Simon Fildes, working with dance artists Rosalind Masson, Simon Ellis and Dai Jian.

In this film, dance and camera are entirely improvised, the relationships, narratives and emotional arc of the work being created through the intricate interaction of on-screen performance, mise-en-scene, camera framing, editing and soundtrack. The cinematography draws on McPherson’s theories and practices of ‘mise-en-scene directing’, where the design elements of the work are meticulously pre-planned, yet the moments of filming, including the performers’ movement and the camera’s framing, remain spontaneous at the time of recording. This generative methodology results in an embodied cinematographic approach recalling Jean Rouch's concept of "cine-trance" and questioning distinctions between fiction and reality. The juxtaposition of the images through montage, through rhythmic, cyclical editing, highlight the on-screen relationships, between individuals, landscape and stories told in and of them.