Viewings

Koyaanisqatsi Bristol Redux, Park St.

This is another attempt at emulating the effect that Koyaanisqatsi produces.  Trying to show ordinary things in a way that is interesting.

This installment concentrates on people.  Check out the other attempt too, and the first go.

Producing a full length rip off of the film is my aim.  This may be one chapter in that project.  The evocative and most excellent sound track is by Pylon King;  think sound scape that actually uses the real sounds from the location along with him fiddling with his Bechstein baby grand in his morning room in the west wing of Pylon Manor.  I sent mark a copy of the film via msn so he could plonk it into logik and do a ditty.  He promised me something that was 'out there', and I think the result really lifts my pictures. 

The film is made from three carefully set up shots with lots of time lapse effects and very careful attention to processing of the images.  In this film I am trying to see how far I can stretch the idea of making a very ordinary set of shots involving.

I hope you try watching it all.  It isn't the sort of short that grabs you immediately, rather I hope it sneaks up on you and persuades you.

What I would really like to shoot like this is a 16mm camera running at 200fps, then transfer to digital to edit, but you don't even want to know how much that would cost.  With DV you are stuck with 25fps or up to 60 fps with some cameras.  (I just found the cost, camera hire 595 per day, plus mandatory technician 400, film cost about 100 a min at 200fps.  I shot for 20 minutes so thats about 4000 all in.  Ho Hum.)

Feedback especially welcome on this film as I am hoping to do much more like this.

So you want to know more....?

This film was inspired by the bit on Koyaanisqatsi where they are filming people in Las Vegas in slow mo and capture the looks at the camera.  That is what I was after.  People often look at cameras so it wasn't hard.  My camera and tripod are large so attract attention, I left the red tally light flashing and had a small sticker on the lens hood that said 'smile'.  I also stood a few feet away from the camera and looked elsewhere.

It was all shot at 1000 of a second because I knew I was going to extreme slow mo and I wanted to avoid any motion blur.  The depth of field was very shallow to give more impact and depth.  The footage was deinterlaced in vdub (essential for slow mo) and sharpened slighty.

The shot used in the middle of the film was framed very carefully to look interesting.  The camera was at an angle, 12 inches off the floor and pointing upwards at about 30 degrees.  This shot is also heavily processed, high saturations and low are very reduced, with mid tones very boosted.  This I hope accentuates the faces.

The speeded up parts are about 12 times speed and the very slow mo is about one sixteenth normal speed.

In the first go at this Koyaanisqatsi thing I used lots of motion blur and super sampling to smooth the video in the extreme slow mo as I wanted fluid effect.  In this film I wanted clarity so there is no motion blur or super sampling, I preferred the starker effect here.

Thanks to the skaters who obligingly whizzed past the camera for me.

Credits

Camera- Mark Watson.

Editor - Mark Watson.

Music - Mark Davis,