In Conversation With.. Ruari Barber-Fleming
Within the broad spectrum of the creative community, some roles lend themselves better to remote working than others. For creatives involved in any kind of media production, for instance, their work presents as a great challenge. Since the industry has shut up shop for the time being, creative collaborators such as photographers and videographers have faced dried up budgets, a long-list of postponed events and a period of looming uncertainty. As the creative community edges even closer towards the undefined ‘new norm’, the highly sought after visual creative Ruari Barber-Fleming, pulls together his experiences of the pandemic so far and gives his take on the biggest challenges that lie ahead and whether there are any silver linings to life under lockdown.
Ruari, who is by no means an unfamiliar face in the local creative scene, has in fact become such a household name that his work is increasingly seen credited within many local artist productions. With an approach that’s so open-minded and easy going, artists are thus able to collaborate well with Ruari which allows them to convey exactly what they want to their audience. With a stranglehold tightly around the neck of the creative world, Ruari has accepted such testing times and further embraces his discipline with an attitude that is “keep on, keeping on”.
When stay-at-home orders were enacted for the first time back in March 2020, there was no doubt that such a posing threat would impact the likes of Ruari’s physically and intimate style of work. Although quick to admit that “the likes of music and live session videos, it [his work] hasn’t changed so much. Other than the formalities of mask wearing, sanitising and social distancing etcetera, the workflow is nearly the same.” Often, working with relatively small teams, Ruari hasn’t really felt limited by the restrictions so far due to a tweak in his shooting style: “With the likes of bands, i.e. showing multiple people on screen at one time, I’ve been shooting with a much wider lens in order to fit everyone in frame, adhering to the distancing rules.”.
Moreover, Ruari is well aware of the threat the pandemic poses to the workload for media production and acknowledges that the pandemic has “definitely narrowed it [the workload]” so far. Since being cut from touring, shooting live shows or planning any large scale projects, Ruari has done what the D.I.Y. creative is good at – adapting and doing as much as possible within the restrictions in order to keep afloat and to stay happy. He believes that “things are just way too uncertain to think past that”.
When trying to wrap his head around what he can contribute to the conversation about recent times, Ruari communicates that video production is more important than ever right now since many artists are craving an authentic connection: “Because of the restrictions a lot of artists and art outlets are reaching out for content creation as it is the only viable alternative to live events.” Since consumable mediums are what’s keeping society sane right now such as books, TV, music, film etc., Ruari believes that “there is perhaps some irony in that it’s probably been one of the least inspiring times for creatives as of late”.
Working essentially in freelance, Ruari is somewhat used to the ‘feast to famine’ nature of the work. For videographers and photographers alike, they are used to being ‘unemployed’ for long stretches of time - even when there isn’t a pandemic in play. When there is such great uncertainty, Ruari advises: “We must try and adapt and continue to keep creativity alive. The world would be a miserable place without it.” During the first lockdown, for example, Ruari admitted that the only work he had was a teaching job over Zoom through the Gaiety Theatre in Ayr.
A still from Tiderays’ music video ‘Hope’, directed and filmed by Ruari.
Undoubtedly, the plight of the creative has gone relatively unnoticed due to an obvious lack of leadership in the country right now. Furthermore, with a fragile industry needing some careful nurturing, Ruari finds that: “Certain organisations have been incredible in offering grants, funding and support to artists. Not everyone meets the criteria to be supported by these organisations though.” He further assumes that those still creating, perhaps had adopted a more relaxed and positive outlook last year “as we’d been assured by the government that there would be some sort of normality in sight”. Proving to be entirely wrong, the clear paradox of ‘creative work moves people’ has inspired Ruari not to sit back and wait for it all to blow over.
During the early days of lockdown last year, Ruari was asked to create small-scale interesting visuals for Dumfries’ Young Promotors Group. Within the confines of his house and garden he “ended up filming things such as making a cup of tea, various plants, trees, sunsets and nature in general. The process was extremely therapeutic for me as it made me feel even more so connected and appreciative of my parents and their home.”
Since limitations spur creative solutions, Ruari took a little time out to carefully plan how to take his creative work to the next level, roping in how to ensure strict health and safety for both artists he’d work with and for himself. Keen to aid artists on more local low-key productions, Ruari believes that although he may not be as efficient as he once was he says “Everyone I’ve worked with recently has been great with working within the confines of the protocols. I think we’re just happy to be able to work at all. Safe practice is a small price to pay in order to continue working.”
On the likes of ‘Hope’, the recent music video release for local indie-rockers Tiderays, Ruari was amazed that the whole production was “fairly straightforward”. Having planned out the entire sequence prior to the shoot by e-mail and Zoom, Ruari noted that all that was left “was just a matter of executing it correctly on the day”. As there was only a team of three, Ruari knew that safe creative collaboration was able to be carried out since he was able to work out how to shoot the production at a safe distance: “After a few rehearsal runs, we were ready to shoot shortly after”. Looking to convey the early morning-ness through the footage, the three of them turned up at 6.00am - Ruari noted “We only had around a ten minute window of ideal light. Too early and it was far too dark for the camera to produce a decent image. Too late and it looked too much like daylight.”.
“We must try and adapt and continue to keep creativity alive. The world would be a miserable place without it.”
Thanks to thorough storyboarding and rehearsal, they only needed a few shots and even chose the first take for the final cut. The success of the Tiderays shoot inspired Ruari further to push with work in order to keep local creativity alive and to create a way to educate artists that certain aspects of camera work are still doable. A recent shoot with the local sonic-songbirds VanIves, for their cover of ‘When You Watch Me’ by Poppy Ajudah, “was completely spontaneous” and “an example of how we can still be creative”, Ruari boasts. Roan and Stuart were far less precious about their own writing and production time, but produced mentioned cover as they are great fans of the song and they enjoy the creative process of adding a twist to already existing music. Ruari claimed: “We can all get bogged down in trying to make everything perfect at the expense of not making anything at all.” One night, Ruari spontaneously cycled out to a location around 9.00pm; Ruari further elaborates: “I was playing Xbox [later that night] and I noticed that heavy fog started to roll in. I thought it would be awesome to shoot under those conditions so I phoned Roan and Stuart and we started shooting that evening. Stuart did a bunch of performative takes while I choreographed my camera movement identically for each take. I then cut between them in post.”. Ruari supports that D.I.Y. spontaneity and the attitude of “just do it” has helped keeping creativity from going stale during these unprecedented times.
With a ‘new norm’ bringing change and a potential threat to the creative circle, old skill sets are destined to be abandoned, or worse, lost. Ruari considers his creative profession to be futureproof, since providing artists with his service, allows them to focus on their music itself which clearly lies in their interest. Although a huge advocate of encouraging D.I.Y., Ruari is aware of its potential threat. He believes that “it’s essentially how most creatives get started nowadays as knowledge is so widely spread around the internet, making it easy to learn new skills”. Nevertheless, Ruari enjoys seeing people’s self-recordings and how they created their own live video content. Believing that this faster way of learning from internet materials might lead to an overall decrease in quality, Ruari does not feel that his work is under threat.
Ruari worked with VanIves during the lockdown, producing a music video for their cover of ‘When You Watch Me’ by Poppy Ajudah
Exemplifying the complexity of his work, he explains: “It’s the reason why, most of the time, modern music and film have large teams behind the final output.” Those that do not know Ruari, must know that these words come from someone who is incredibly humble and that it doesn’t need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Similarly, when noting thoughts on the trend of live music streaming and its acceptance over a multitude of platforms from mobile phones, Ruari is quick to coin them as both “necessary evils”. Sources like Zoom and the filming of music via mobile phones ensured most of last year’s music provision. Ruari confidently shrugs off their imposing threat to the art in the future: “It will never replace cinema cameras and crews, no matter how far technology goes - large sensors, quality interchangeable lenses, bitrate, colour depth/science will almost likely never make it to mobile phones.” However, he also gives credit to the medium: “That’s not to say you can’t tell a great story with a phone camera” […] “It’s [their use] right for the time”.
As the creative community has more recently been trying to adapt, Ruari claims that if ways continue to function and restrictions stay in place, he will try to evolve to a point where he can learn to be quick on his feet and do productions on a lesser capacity-scale than usual: “Collaboration in general seems to be more difficult so I’m not sure if, as I mentioned earlier, the general output quality of content will deteriorate or if we will adapt and find worthwhile alternatives.” Hailed as being one of the worst times ever to be an artist, creatively and financially, Ruari, like so many others have proven that the sheer lack of external stimulation from everyday doings has made it extremely difficult to create. Ruari explains that the prevailing “get on with it attitude” is not helping. He notes that if more people just outright voiced the negative impact of the pandemic for artists, the state of the industry might be in a far better place. Ruari feels that creativity shouldn’t be forced, as when it does, the quality of content would drop and attitudes towards productions would fall below-par: “Don’t feel guilty if you don’t feel particularly creative right now”, advises Ruari, “Very recently I had to remind myself to keep creating to enjoy the process rather than the intention of making something good”
“Everyone I’ve worked with recently has been great with working within the confines of the protocols. I think we’re just happy to be able to work at all. Safe practice is a small price to pay in order to continue working.”
Ruari further explained “I became pretty obsessed with just trying to make things as good as possible and in turn I was missing the whole point of doing it in the first place, to have fun”. Providing good advice for the entire creative eco-system, Ruari makes it clear that to “go out and enjoy doing it” and “not to dwell too heavily on the final outcome of your efforts” is the best way to go. However, Ruari does also empathise with those creatives who would much prefer to sit back and reflect: “If you don’t feel like creating right now, it’s fine, try and not worry too much about it”.
It is important to emphasise that although the creative community is vast within its nature, it stands stronger together than ever. It appears that time to talk, followed by the community’s push for change, were needed for this process and it’s the likes of Ruari’s wise and motivating words that should be put at the vanguard and broadcast to everyone in the creative industry. That aside, his passion and forward-thinking attitude alone, make him an all-important pillar of the creative community.