Medium Specificity - Frames of Light

Frames of Light

             Artist’s Statement:             

The key to film is the movement and flow of images. Without fast movement or sometimes the addition of sound, film is simply still photography. Often times we forget that film is just that, images. In most cases we see 24 or 30 still images per second. But due to the phenomenon known as persistence of vision, our eyes and brain interpret the fast succession of images as fluid movement.            

I deconstructed a film and reduced it to just an array of the still images that once made the complete moving image. I then arranged all these stills into one complete and still photograph to represent the whole film. Viewing the same images this way gives the viewer a new experience. These stills are what make up the movie clip, but are presented in a way that allows the viewer to progress through the images at their own pace and not a pre-determined or industry standard rate or speed. This breaks the illusion of continuity.Viewing images like this also tears down movement to its core. Although this clip is only just over 2.5 seconds, the flame moves a great deal and produced 84 images. It helps make actions look more significant and illustrates just how much action and how many details and images make up a few seconds of any film.               

Creating a still piece from the frames of a moving image was my main goal, but I made other aesthetic choices based on this medium. When deciding on what event to film, I decided to capture a match being lit and going out. I focused on this because another basic element of film is lighting. Film is in essence, capturing light. So, in my film I also depict different levels of light.            

I arranged the photos in the way I did so they could still tell the story. A film’s story is produced by putting all the still images together in a certain progression and order. Most films today follow a linear narrative structure. I wanted to emphasize this throughout the pictures to show they were still telling the same story. The progression of the intensity of the light represents the progression of a story. It starts of with an inciting moment (the match being lit), builds to a bright climax, and then whittles down to a resolution. You can visually see the plot arc represented by the light intensity when looking at this photo.            

A lot of work goes into films, and I think this photograph I have made helps to illustrate that. It deconstructs film structure and gives a new perspective on what we are really seeing when we watch a film.