Class – Time: Metropolis | Instructor – Nina Cooke John

For this assignment we were required to make a film about an event that takes place in any given day. That event must be represented with my perception of time considered.

You can view the film below:

In terms of my representation of time, the film was supposed to represent how tired I was after a day of classes. I wanted the exhaustion to be reflected with repetition on the screen. I utilised the crop and position tool in Premiere pro and played around with the location of the clips within the frame. In many cases that made the pacing feel slower and was disorienting to the viewer.

A stylistic effect that enhanced this perception of time was the black and white. As well as conveying when an event was shown out of the linear portrayal of time, the black an white effect inexplicably seemed to slow down the pace of the film without the clips actually being slowed down. A shot in particular with the same clip being repeated side by side and getting thinner (when I was taking off my jumper at 00:55) was loosely based of a piece I saw at MoMA, called Claire Eckstein With Lipstick by Ellen Auerbach. The piece displayed the same event from multiple perspectives. In my film, there was only one perspective, but the repetition of it showed conveyed a disorienting feeling; which is enhanced by the touch of black and white.

In terms of audio, to enhance the exhaustion felt, I used the audio I picked up from the camera (in addition to my voice over*). I also used sound as an effective tool to enhance my perception of time. I repeated a scene (when I dropped my phone at 02:02), as I did I wanted to emphasise the sound as that was going through my head at that time, so I added reverb to it so it lingers a little bit longer in the film and there is a small portion of time where the audio doesn’t really match the clip, and that adds to how unsettling it was experiencing that event. The reverb also makes that portion stand out from the fairly ordinary audio playing throughout the rest of the clip.

*My voice over was also just to enhance the grogginess I felt, I recorded it with a tired voice which definitely helped. I believe it enhanced the piece, it goes well with the perceptions of time I have explored.