Video by: Julián Rico Engel
Music: “Jenova” by iTAL tEK
SOME BACKSTORY:
It started with me being exposed to Ken Jacob’s experimental film “Celestial Subway Lines / Salvaging Noise” in film school, back in 2015. I was mesmerized by the clip that throbbed and screamed at us from the screen in the small, dark classroom.
I asked the teacher if I could borrow the DVD to watch the full thing at home, or at least some more of it. The request was met with much amusement. “Remember to give it back, I can’t go to sleep without it”, he’d joke.
My plan was to just start watching it, alone in my dark living room, and turn it off when I had enough. I ended up sitting through all of it, an hour and fifteen minutes of this stuff. I remember glancing down every now and then at the timer in the DVD player, watching minutes tick by, and being ready to say “alright, that’s enough” when something new scene came along and I was hooked again. I must have looked quite demented.
My favorite thing about the effect was how motion and image seemed to be at the same time frenzy and frozen, and I thought I’d love to replicate it incorporating some movement.
I grabbed the Canon camera I owned at the time and borrowed a tripod from a friend, and headed to the theater of my small town. We were familiar with the city hall people running it, so it was easy to get access. I turned on some basic, top-down lights in order to keep the background curtain dark, and began recording a series of clips moving and dancing, mostly in place and with several degrees of close-ups.
Originally I wanted to use a different song, combining the strobe effect during the chorus section with some regularly lit dance sequences. When I started editing, the project began to change direction, and I ended up switching to a different track. Although iTAL tEK’s whole “Hollowed” album is amazing, I was particularly drawn to the track “Jenova”, with its shivery, constant, crescendo beat, and decided to give it a go.
The process was quite spontaneous. I knew I was going to use a strobe kind of effect at some point, and I had recorded kind of accordingly, but I ended up finding new, interesting effects that I could really make into a sort of narrative, and just following the music. I thought I’d have to cut the song, since it felt way too long for me to fill with the material I had, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It evolved too beautifully, and taking any section out felt like breaking the whole thing. So, I kept going, trying to find new ways to grow along with the music, even if that meant risking a bit of filler.
It was quite a feat of editing, at least for me. I wish I hadn’t lost the original Sony Vegas files, stuffed full of clips the length of a fraction of a second. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d have the patience to pull off that kind of thing today.
I must have finished it at some point during 2016, and it’s still one of my favorite things I’ve made. I still find myself going back to it every now and then, I don’t know why.
(except that I do)