Justin Tierney, a time-lapse film maker and doctoral student in music composition at Duke, recently took top honors in the Cityscape/Industrial category and Best-in-Show at the LA Time-lapse Film festival for his work "Tokyo Aglow."
“Tokyo Aglow” is the second installment of his dissertation, CONFLUX, which he filmed in 2014 and 2015. Here, he discusses his award-winning project with Duke Today.
Q: Much of your work has Japan at the heart of its subject focus. What exactly is it that brought you to Japan in the first place?
A: I travelled to Japan to meet my in-laws for the first time in 2007. My wife is a photographer too. We toured her home town of Matsuyama taking photographs. We experienced both how photogenic parts of Japan are, and how photographer-friendly. I visit yearly now.
Q: Where does your interest in this form of filmmaking come from?
A: I like the idea that with time-lapse, I can use the camera as a tool to compress time -- to reveal things that we cannot see in ordinary life. A city intersection can feel chaotic when you’re on the ground in real-time but in time-lapse the cycles of crowds and traffic are ordered and regular.
I’m also attracted to the element of serendipity in time-lapse. Some things I can plan, but others I cannot. I can choose the framing, the camera settings, the time of day, the overall subject, but the details are left to chance. I never know exactly what will happen while the camera is running. And every time it’s exciting to see the result.
Q: Describe your creative process when gearing up to film.
A: Time-lapse is created from a series of still photos. I set up the camera to take a photo every few seconds. Then these still photos are combined to create a video. For some of the night time-lapses of traffic from my hotel window, I would take a photo every 10 seconds for five to eight hours. This would create a clip of only 10-20 seconds. If the camera moves by a millimeter it could ruin the whole shot. So planning for stability is key.
Location scouting using Google Maps and Google Earth is usually the first step. Then I plan the angle, time of day, what lenses to bring, if I should use motion-control equipment or not, and then wait for the right weather conditions.
Q: How did you go about creating the right blend of sounds for the music in this video?
A: From the outset the idea was to have fast images juxtaposed with slow music. I composed the music and edited the film at the same time, constantly adjusting both. I wanted the music to highlight the patterns brought out by time-lapse but more importantly, express a certain set of moods that one might feel when seeing the city in such a time-compressed way.
The Deviant Septet [a contemporary music ensemble that came to Duke earlier this year] recorded most of the acoustic music for me in Baldwin Auditorium this past April. I separately recorded the piano part myself at SoundPure Studios here in Durham and the koto part in my house. Then there were all the field recordings I collected over two years in Japan: sounds of the city like train announcements, crosswalk cuckoos, elevator chimes, conversing crowds, etc. I integrated these with the acoustic music.
Q: What do you want people to feel or how do you want them to reach when they watch this video?
A: I want viewers to come to their own conclusions. Some might feel that it’s an ode to urban infrastructure; others might feel the smallness and loneliness of people in a massive city. I wanted the final work to be abstract enough that many interpretations are possible.