Ears Out for Midsummer

Writer Biography
Matthew Thorpe-Coles is a poet and writer living in Wiltshire. His poetry discusses themes of masculinity, nature, influence and heritage. He recently graduated from Bath Spa's MA in Creative Writing, and has since taken part in projects writing with artificial intelligence.

Reflections
I've always written with a visual-first approach, so being asked if one of my poem's could be turned into a film was really validating. I was pleased that this piece in particular was chosen as it's perhaps one of the more conversational poems I've written, and so it was exciting to see some of the more menial language I used afforded the impact of visual art. Most interesting, though, was how the film gave me some insight into how my own visualization process works. As you'll see above, I start off direct, focusing on the immediate and quotidian, and eventually I reel back my perspective, ending up in the abstract and contemplative.

Voiced by Stephen Lightbown

Director Biography
Professor Bambo Soyinka is an award-winning writer, director and immersive story developer. With more than a decade’s experience in multi-platform storytelling and production, she has initiated and directed projects across the UK and internationally. Bambo is Professor of Story at Bath Spa University and Chair of the Research Centre for Transcultural Creativity and Education. She conceived and founded Paper Nations in 2015. Bambo is the Director/Principal Investigator of “Bulletins from the Edge”.

“All of the films in “Bulletins from the Edge” are the outcome of a three-way conversation between the creative production team, the writer, and me. Some of the films were quick and easy to make. We were able to intuitively ‘tune in’ to each other and we reached a shared vision that we were all happy with. Other films took much longer to make and required several conversations with the writer, sometimes leading to an extended back-and-fore process with the editorial team before we settled on a joint approach.”

Full credits available here.