‘Streak’ is a kaleidoscopic alternate reality that plays on the manipulation of light and time. Through the use of long exposure photography, light entering the lens is prolonged and stretched out, giving a sense of movement through time. Drawing inspirations from Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 experimental film ‘Koyaanisqatsi’, streak showcases the dynamic movements of lights illuminating the still night. Streak aims to captivate the viewers and evoke a sense of moving forward with its quick-paced and bright moving lights playing alongside with fast paced music. The use of different neon-like colours combined with overlaying effects alters the perception and reality of the original image and brings a whole new dimension to time and space.
Following my progress from the previous weeks, I was not exactly satisfied with the outcome of the experimental film(nature) that I had created and that it was different than what I had envisioned, following a few minor problems that come along with it. With that being said, I’ve decided to put the nature theme that I initially picked for this project aside for possible future personal projects instead (when I have more time) and go a completely fresh and new direction. Referring to other ideas in the first post (moodboard), I decided to adapt the use of long exposure photography and incorporate this technique into an experimental film.
I’ve always been intrigued with how light is perceived and how amazing our eyes enables us to see the world with the power of light. I wanted to combine the manipulation of light and time to create something that we don’t get to see with our naked eyes. By doing long exposure photography, I am able to allow the shutter to be open for a specific period of time, capturing any form of light that passes through the frame and therefore ‘lengthening’ the streak of light. A normal photo captures the light at the specific point of time, almost like a freeze frame, but long exposure allows me to capture streaks instead.
For this project, I did a series of long exposure timelapses where I turn the set of photos captured into a moving image. Therefore, the light streaks captured will look like its flowing through the image, giving this sense of movement.
Experimentation
I did some test shots and was quite pleased with the results. The beauty of long exposure photography + timelapse is that there is some calculation involved to get the desired time for each angle. I had to play around with the shutter speed first to see roughly how I wanted to achieve the final outcome of the light streak. After a few tests, the best setting for me now is opening the shutter at 6 seconds for each image and then setting an intervalometer that will automatically take a photo every 3 seconds. This means that I take about 9 seconds total to capture one image. I set my timer to about 20 minutes for each framing that I wanted, which estimates around 133 photos. When I import into adobe premiere pro, I set my sequence to 24fps which means that for each set of photos, I’m able to achieve about 5 seconds worth of moving visuals.
The video below is in the 1920 x 1080 resolution. This is the overall frame of my photo before I actually scaled it to make it look more ambiguous. The reason I took a wide shot instead of a ‘zoom in’ is because it gives me ample room to manually select the specific framing of the 3840 x 480 resolution to be.
The video below is the same video from above but with a resolution of 3840 x 480 pixels. I scaled to make it look more zoomed which allows it to look more ambiguous and more futuristic looking.
Another example of what I have so far.
Challenges
One of the challenges I’ve faced so far for this is finding varying shots for the light streaks. The best so far that fits the current theme are cars. I’m still seeking for more objects or things that emit light and it has to be moving in order for me to manipulate the light using long exposure.
Another challenge is setting up the shot properly and ensuring the camera is untouched for the duration of the shot. I have to ensure the focus is properly adjusted before I start the timelapse. There was once when the focus was off for the entire duration of a 20 min shot, which resulted in loss of time and I had to reshoot the same scene again.
I’ve also had trouble finding a suitable song to fit the fast paced movement of the shots initially. Most of the songs felt a little slow and didn’t fit the futuristic/urban lights feel to the image. However, after scouring for hours on the internet, I managed to find a fitting song for the experimental film that I’m doing from soundcloud.
Test footage
For testing on the wall, I had compiled a few scenes that I’ve captured so far just to have a feel for it and see the quality of the overall project. I guess the good thing about taking photos for timelapses is that there is a lower chance of quality loss.
To progress from here, I will be looking out for more places/things to film and also working on my edit, mainly editing to the beat of the music and hopefully combine it into a whole visual piece.
Out of the 3 main themes that were presented (Data, Illusion and Play), I knew I wanted to explore deeper into the theme of ‘Illusion’. There were 2 main ideas that I wanted to explore under ‘Illusion’, mainly playing on the idea of manipulating ordinary everyday objects and turning them into a completely new subject. Both of the ideas are categorised under experimental film:
Timelapse/Long exposure
Kaleidoscope effect + the mixture of nature and cityscapes
Timelapse / Long exposure
I’ve always been intrigued by how long exposure alters the image completely. It is something we don’t normally be able to capture with our naked eyes but more so with the help of technology. There is also a sense of movement running through the image even though it is just a still image.
This video is an example of how timelapse and long exposure photography can work together to display a sense of movement through the city. I love how the lights from the vehicles, buildings and street lights enables this sense of dynamic flow within the city.
Kaleidoscope effect + A mixture of Nature and Cityscapes
I’m leaning more towards this second idea. I’m inspired by how Central Park in New York City is a whole plot situated in the middle of the city full of buildings and skyscrapers and I was wondering how I can combine these two different elements of nature and city together into a cohesive piece.
Top view of Central Park
I’m looking to create an experimental film combining the elements of nature and cityscape, putting Singapore in the context of how there is still nature all around us despite how technologically advanced and urbanised Singapore has become. Building on this idea, I want to also include specific visual elements that will allow the film to evolve into a more abstract piece instead of just a narrative.
I did a little research on how Singaporeans can connect back with nature despite the urban growth and came across this article.
The article talks about how “there is a growing disconnect between the people who live in cities and the natural environment” and that they are trying to bridge the gap between nature and the community.
“This initiative aims to synergise and coordinate all nature-related events, activities, and programmes to better reach out to the community to encourage them to bond over and with nature.”
I found it interesting that there are efforts being placed to encourage the growth of conserving nature and how we as Singaporeans, living in an urban city can learn to start appreciating nature and coexist with one another.
I found some videos online that allowed me to visualise my project, and piecing together different parts of inspiration and ideas into one complete project.
The mood I’m going is roughly reflected in these two videos, with certain scenes reflecting nature in its quiet and untouched form. The videos evoke a certain mood that I want to apply to my project.
This video shows the kaleidoscope and mirror effect applied to reflect an ordinary image to turn it into a more abstract piece, giving a fresh perspective of what is normally seen. I want to incorporate these 2 elements together and there is definitely still a lot of experimentation to be done through filming as well as the editing process to achieve the desired outcome.
