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The Making of In Other People's Skins
The project started life with an earlier project by Terry, called The Dinner Party, which used some of the same techniques. The Dinner Party is currently running at Techne in Milan and has also been seen at: Phoenix Arts Centre Glastonbury, Dartington Hall, Glastonbury Festival, Bordeaux Quay (as part of the Organic Food fair in Bristol)
Filming took place at the Wickham Theatre at Bristol University's Drama Department. We invited four Bristol restaurants to get involved and all of them enthusiastically took up the challenge, providing a meal for 12, and in some cases coming along to eat it too! Our thanks to all of them.
Because the camera had to be directly overhead, we constructed two towers with a walkway in between, from which we suspended the cameras as well as some sound and lighting equipment. We had 2 monitors on site, so that our diners could see what was being filmed, as well as an OctoCore G5 Apple Mac onto which we downloaded footage as soon as it was shot.
In Other People's Skins was shot on High Definition (on the Panasonic P2 system, with Firestore Memory cards) so that the individual character of each person's hand, the reflections on the glass, the patina and texture of the food can be clearly discerned. The intent is to suspend the audience on the threshold between the real and the virtual.
After all the meals had been filmed, the footage was edited together, intercutting meals and making connections across the very different cultures and cuisines.
The footage will be screened from a computer server which will feed a projector, suspended directly above the dining table. White chairs and a white tablecloth compete the ghostly apparition.
LINK TO UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL DEPARTMENT OF DRAMA