blues

A timelapse of an empty day going by.
(this is edit number two. edit one is here)

I don't think this was a successful attempt at working with time, mostly because my mind went blank and the only idea within it was a timelapse. I like timelapses because of the fluid way the image changes, and the fact that when you start, you don't know what you're going to end up with.

The timelapse in this video is reversed and consists of 45 minutes of footage sped up by 5000 percent. It's also reversed, and as my camera recorded it into four different files, I slowed each file down by 4 frames using Premiere Pro's 'Posterize Time' to interrupt this flow of time that the smooth timelapse created. The very start of this video is a very strange scene I happened to wander upon with multiple large lights turning on and off constantly for about ten minutes, which I thought was quite hypnotising.

The audio was a short journey between Charing Cross and Embankment on the underground, lasting fourty seven seconds (recorded on a Zoom and with a hallway reverb)

[..] but the most striking thing is the way that the machine pulls on your heart. you can actually feel it struggling to beat and changing shape…flattening inside of your chest. Its similar to that horrible sinking, tugging heartache that comes only with complete and overwhelming sadness. and then you pass out.

This is one of the heaviest videos I've seen in a while and it's not necessarily what it looks like - it's where it takes place and what it symbolises. Filmed inside a human centrifuge, they ran it eighteen times to get the lead singer to perform the whole of the song. His facial expressions change and the sweat on his forehead tells about the intensity of the experience. It is so strange to watch that I still haven't figured out exactly how it was recorded and edited. I just thought this was a fascinating video to do with time, movement and sense of heaviness.

In recent mainstream films one of my favourite uses of time was actually in Dunkirk. They used three different timelines, counting down to the main event: a week, a day, an hour and they took place in three different areas: air, sea and land.

These locations and times created a sort of a triptych - three unlinked pathways that all lead up to the big revelation. I found it amazing how the film changed between the times, relying on the spectator to keep up with what storyline they were following at that particular time. Needless to say, it was also the beautiful camerawork from Nolan and van Hoytema that played with the feeling of time, silence and chaos.