Here is the link to my final project proposal.

The final video:

The video consists of 2 segments: day & night.

Day Sequence (36s):

•  Traffic light turning red to green, wide shot to close-up (3s)
•  Timelapses, 3s each – people, people, cars
•  Close-up shots, 2s each – people, people, cars
•  Close-up shots, 1s each – feet x3, cars x3
•  Close-up shots, 0.5s each – people, feet, cars x4
• Close-up shots, 0.25s each – people, feet, cars x4
• Close-up shots, 0.15s each – people, feet, cars x4

Night Sequence (36s):

• Real-time clips of street lamps, 9s each x4

The day sequence is filled with visual activity, and the ticking sound every time there is a cut. The cut gets more and more rapid, and the ticks get faster and faster, creating a sense of compressed experienced time. The cuts get extremely rapid, and builds up to a climax. The tension is abruptly released with a cut to a night time scene, with no motion besides the blinking of the street lamps. The clips transit to the next with the blinking of the street lamps staying constant. Even the only motion in the clip is consistent, creating experienced time that is stretched out.

Discussion

After showing the clip to the class, I received different responses. While everyone generally agreed that the two segments did not feel like the same time (although they were), some felt that the night was longer, while others felt the day was longer, which was something I did not really expect. Some interesting observations:

• Some felt that the day was longer because of the amount of visual noise and confusion,  making it hard to take in anything at all – which overwhelmed them and made them feel like the experienced time was very long.
• Heather also observed that the sequence might have affected the way we experienced the clips. Because the night was after the very rapid day, and there was no transitional period (abrupt cut to night), the viewer might have used the night to ‘recover’ from the confusion of the day segment and they might have just started to ‘set into’ the night when it ended, hence making the experienced time feel short.
• Others, like me, felt that the day was shorter, and the night was longer. The lack of motion, and the constancy of the blinking in the night made them feel like less was happening and time was being dragged out as compared to the day where motion and sound were rapidly building up.

It was quite interesting for me to hear all the different responses, and it really proved the subjective nature of experienced time. As a creator, we can have an ‘ideal’ response in mind, but every viewer brings with them their own set of experiences and this can cause their response to deviate from the one intended. But I feel that this adds interest to the work and provides a platform for discussion, to hear different points of view.