Tips and Ponderings

[-Crying is mostly considered a private affair and in many cultures people will try to avoid showing their tears to other people. Filming yourself shedding tears might therefore seem an extraordinarily difficult task. And it is true, it is. Even if you have a camera close at hand and you reach for it to start filming while crying, most people would find it difficult to continue crying. But if you have a good reason to weep, experience has shown that you will stop bothering about the camera soon enough.

Different tactics might have to be employed, though. Be creative.

Onions?
Our experience has shown that onions are good and bad. When your eyes start running from onions it does not look like crying. It looks like you are chopping onions. But it does set the tone for your body to then more easily cry for real afterwards. So in some cases it can be useful you start your session with chopping some onions till the tears flow and then stop it and try to weep for real.

Let the camera roll
Often the easiest is to let the camera roll for some time when you feel you might be in the right mood for crying. Just let it roll for half an hour or even more and then it should not feel as disruptive anymore.

WebCams
A lot of the new laptops have built-in webcams in them, that give a nice close-up more or less automatically. That sort of scenario might feel less intrusive than a video camera on a tripod. Film yourself while looking at photos, for example.

Tripod
Or then do set up a video camera on a tripod. Zoom it in onto your face. Forget about it.

Digital still cameras and phones
Alternatively use those little still cameras with a video function. The Canon Ixus series, for example, produces good video, which is comparable to a cheap video camera. Keep the framerate at 30 and the resolution high. There are of course other brands that do the same. Same goes for phones. But catching the tears like this can be very difficult, like mentined above, especially if you are going to do it yourself.

Tell your parner
Tell your wife, boyfriend or another familymember to immediately start filming if you happen to start crying.

Formats?
For us it is not so important which format you use, super 8 or HD, as long as the emotion is real. With that said, the quality does affect how much detail there can be in the image and how well the emotion has been captured.

Would like to do it but dont know how to put it in the computer!
If it is easier, just send a video tape per mail to:

The Weeping Gallery
c/o Netherlands Media Art Institute
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV Amsterdam

Why would one want to weep in a gallery space?
That is impossible to answer. Different people for different reasons. I think one idea is that this project gives people the opportunity to realease some of their sadness into the universe. It could be considered to be in a sorry state of affairs at the moment. Your reasons can be personal, political, spiritual or something else. Obvious personal sorrows, such as loss of loved ones, betrayal and the like bring us to tears. There are many things to cry about even if one isn't going through personal sorrows. The environment, US leadership or property prices might be reason enough to break down in tears. We like to think the website does also offer to fullfil a social function. What it is, we don't exactly know yet. If you want to tell us about why you in particular wanted to post your video please let us know. Tell us also if you mind us publishing it next to your video.

Will people do it?
We hope so, but that remains to be seen. Some have already submitted, but of course we would like to have a steady stream of material building up, but it is too early to say whether it will work. This is a social and artistic experiment.-]