DESCRIPTION

In 2004 I collaborated with my long time friend and mentor of sorts Daniel Hopkins. I met Dan in 2000 when he started work as a media technician at Staffordshire University. Dan, it tuned out, was quite the experimental sound designer and video artist and I became familiar with his music and abstract video work during and after my final year at university. With Tunnel 8, I wanted to explore another visual fascination I had with enclosed spaces. Like my other Left of the Border Films collaborations, I shot and edited a sequence (shot in Newcastle-under-Lyme) of a tunnel that I had walked through numerous times before. What was always notable about this tunnel was the sense of foreboding I always felt whenever I walked past it or through it. Dan seemed to pick up on that emotion with this film and produced a soundtrack that encapsulates that feeling of uneasy dread. Tunnel 8 is quite a reflective film for me and I have tried to visually represent the idea of ever shifting emotions that I often feel in enclosed spaces.