Film 6 · ROLAND ROOS

"Hotspot Produktion"





  Basic Idea
The “Videosafari” deals with someones personal perception of a place. Everybody has got their own reminiscence of a certain place that not always but often provides an expectation. Differences between those individual perceptions can only be discovered by expression. This is done for the project with the production of “Hotspots”, a short video trailer that shows someones idea about a place.

My work is based on a documentation of a place to which i had no intensional approach. With the “Videosafari”, i wanted to know a new place and therefore i asked the initiator to allocate a place for me. In that case, the limitation towards an expectational composure was, as far as imagination goes, reduced. I got the car parking place where hundreds of people everyday arrive and which i never really had recognized so far.



For my “Hotspot” production, i was interested in learning more about what’s happen in that aerea. For most people, that place is often used just as an temporary zone; to enter a bus that brings them somewhere, arriving after a long bus-ride or picking up relatives and friends. Due that fact, i decided to make an 24 hour observation. I thought it would be an gained experience to keep staying on that place and to become one of those waiting people without having any destination. In other words; to overstay all travelers during one day (24 hour) and document it in sound and pictures.


  Recording Procedure
On Friday the 21 of August i started the observation at four AM. With two cameras, one mounted visible for everybody on a tripod and a hidden surveillance camera, i made every hour a 30 second video recording. Both of the cams were fix so that there were no camera movement possible. Due the fact, that i kept going on a one hour schedule, a certain kind of coincidence appeared. It happened, that shortly before i came to do my recording, all surrounding people left for their arriving car. In that way, the video material includes no personal intension, likes or dislikes about whats going on but replays an exact time structure.



The audio recording is a mix out of the general sound environment and selected happenings like discussions, music-players, announcements or euphoric gestures. That means, that the sound-excerpts stands in no connection to the video-recording (see “Sound” further down). I finished the session the next day at five AM (the first recording failed, thats why i had to the four AM recording again on Saturday morning).

  Post- Production
The video rough material that i got from the recording session was about 720 seconds, that had to be compressed down to the 60 second trailer length. My intension was the selection out of that 24 file-pool. I made the decision (in content and length) what of each sequenze would be used in the final mix. The appropriate files were changed in speed so that i got an approximate duration of about two second each. The new total play time were sloppy 48 seconds. The missing time i used to fill with individual frames in a random manner. That means, that a coincidence generator, made in Max/MSP, is responsible for the frame arranging between the sequences. Those “fill-ins” functions now as the connecting limb between the linear playback of each hour. Since the camera was mounted very fix, all static visual aspects like houses, trashcans or a shaft (one of which is seen in the video) do not move during the whole trailer length. In that way, the video is very fluttering arranged but not all you can see moves endlessly. A mix between static and spinning pictures break the common movie expectation.


  Sound-design
As i mentioned earlier, the original sound recording does not stand in any connection to the video sequences itself but enriches the trailer. Those sound files are used to emphasis the general mood that i got during the long day. As the video arrangement is jumbled up, so is the sound structure too. A deep and a short attacked bass sound underlines every cut in the video and significate the time domain also auditive. There is no relgularity in the beat. A further sound level is made with the clarinet. This instrument is chosen because of my personal predilection. For me, that soundcharacteristic underlines the disposition of the observation. The clarinet also was forced to be set after the video arrangement. The player had to be aware of the video cuts rather than of what is shown in the sequences. An unintentional but nice side effect are the clicks. Those are made either by cuts (after the movie) or by the Max/MSP software which often forced the computers CPU into a critical level.






Credits

   Spot   Busbahnhof Zürich HB
   Künstler    Roland Roos

   Thanks to    
   Christian Fischer    Clarinet player
   Roland Wagner    early breakfast
   Roman Meier    DV camera
   AV Center HGKZ    buying the surveillance camera
   The City of Zürich    providing electricity for my batteries
   Andre Gwerder    S-Video converter
   Roman and Edin    choosing that place for me
   SNM    technical equipment