Film of Cows, Film for People || Open
Alice watches the cow as it stands silently listening to something in the distance. Alice can’t hear anything over the repeating crank of the Bolex camera. She releases the little metal button and sighs. The camera’s crank stops spinning and the film stops taking. Usually this is enough, just the cows, but today Alice just isn’t loving it. Just another stationary cow. She already spent all the time getting the film in there; she had to find something, or someone, to shoot. She groans a little looking down the long winding road to town. She liked living in the outskirts because it is quiet, but she if there is any action in Clearwell today, it’ll be in town. Of course that’s a ways away.
Easily Alice lifts the tripod up over her shoulder and starts her march toward town. She cuts across a once full corn field. Breathlessly she admires the beauty of the barren fields coated in a light snow. Even the yellow dead stalks sticking out make her heart ache. Knowing that she’ll never be able to replicate this feeling of walking through a snowy field with just her camera.
She wastes no more time then and speeds along to town to try and make it before most of the shops close and the bar opens. Alice smiles as she passes the little store fronts, their windows decorated, their doors open. She loves the friendly environment of a town living in the past. Inside she could see people talking to each other, working together, no one distracted by a device, people simply enjoying people.
In what she guessed to be the center of town she folds out her tripod. Alice finagles the decide so the feet slip down between the cobblestones of the street. She sets the Bolex to face down the road toward the little shops and sets the aperture and other settings before cranking up the camera to take a full minute of film. Then she waits. Waits to capture the herd of townspeople headed home, just like a herd of cows back to their barn. Alice laughs quietly to herself at the comparison.
