3 Years 3 Minutes

March 24, 2006 1:57 PM

3 Years 3 Minutes. Every photograph this MeFi member has taken for the past three years, artfully set to music — over 11,000 images, each one there and gone in a flicker-flash. May provoke seizures in the susceptible. [via mefi projects]
posted by killdevil (47 comments total)

Next week, 11,000 songs played together.
posted by null terminated at 1:59 PM on March 24, 2006

Or I should say, "That's a lot of pictures, but what's the point if they go by too fast to appreciate?"
posted by null terminated at 2:00 PM on March 24, 2006

Increasing the rate of the rotation of unremarkable images to produce an indistinguishable blur does not improve said images.
posted by Pontius Pilate at 2:15 PM on March 24, 2006

Am I looking at three years running in parallel? Seems strange to do it that way.
posted by bashos_frog at 2:18 PM on March 24, 2006

On a positive note, someone actually might be inspired by this to use the same approach, but create something a little more meaningful.
posted by psmealey at 2:26 PM on March 24, 2006

It made smiles.
posted by CynicalKnight at 2:27 PM on March 24, 2006

If Death comes a-knockin', he'll be ready.
posted by rob511 at 2:33 PM on March 24, 2006

Its' all a blur. I'm not able to make out anything that's going on --

Holy crap! Onion parsley peanut butter! What the fuck!
posted by Astro Zombie at 2:39 PM on March 24, 2006

I have no idea why anyone would want to do this, and, after having watched it, I have no idea why anyone would want to watch it. Crazy.
posted by nylon at 2:51 PM on March 24, 2006

There's not enough speed on the planet to make my brain wrap around this project.
posted by Busithoth at 2:53 PM on March 24, 2006

Fuck the haters. This was cool.

(It was really sweet as they all hit Halloween: B, then A, then C.)
posted by ColdChef at 2:56 PM on March 24, 2006

That was the best thing I've seen all week. Execution was deceptively simple. Music was fun, too. Kudos, Felix.
posted by brownpau at 3:03 PM on March 24, 2006

Thanks for this, I enjoyed it too. The manic quality reminded me of Squarepusher's A Journey to Reedham off Big Loada (link to a page of links to actual mp3s). There's never been a video for that awesome song, but I imagine it would be something like this.

Reading the about page for the project, it sounds like the idea for the movie came after the photos were taken? It would have been a diff kind of project, but it would have been interesting if the creator already had the movie in mind as the pictures were taken over the course of 3 years. I'm a big fan of split-screen media, and I wanted to see more designed interplay happening among the 3 subframes.

For example, you might take certain pictures during the same day/week/month during all three years, in order to make a collage when the movie is made. It could be a widescreen image of an open space, or a color play on RGB, or you handing over an object to yourself from the leftmost subframe to the rightmost subframe (outstretched arm in the middle frame), and so on.
posted by shortfuse at 3:10 PM on March 24, 2006

That's like how I watch TV.
posted by mazola at 3:13 PM on March 24, 2006

I want those three years back.
posted by crunchland at 3:13 PM on March 24, 2006

I thought it was an interesting way to repurpose photographs that are otherwise, yes, unremarkable. The "blur" of someone's life going was a novel way to approach it. Yeah, basically, it's a slideshow that doesn't go slow enough for you to appreciate any one photo -- so you're forced to experience it as a totality.

I can definitely see this approach being used for something with a little deeper creativity, and definitely this is something I wish I had for myself (I have about 3½ photos from the same period ...)
posted by dhartung at 3:19 PM on March 24, 2006

I thought it was really cool.
posted by substrate at 3:21 PM on March 24, 2006

I like the snatches of events like a basketball game wehre you see fleeting images, it's like a very quick overview of someone's memory. Very cool. And trying to force the format into something more contrived would actually be less interesting. It's the finding interesting sequences amidst the chaos that is much more compelling than something that someone might have meticulously crafted.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:29 PM on March 24, 2006

I thought the Hillbilly Montage to the tune of "dueling banjos" was better. More spam, more Dukes of hazzard, more toilets.
posted by anthill at 3:29 PM on March 24, 2006

What I liked most about that was the effect from taking multiple pictures at a time trying to get the right shot so the camera moves a little bit. Throughout most of it you get these glimpses of a movie where the camera just moves left and right ever so briefly. It was enough to make your eye change focus and then get frustrated because by the time you look at it its gone. This is interesting to watch but I can't really say I enjoyed it or anything.
posted by Phantomx at 3:34 PM on March 24, 2006

There's a movie titled Smoke with a character played by Harvey Keitel who has a photo album filled with photographs he's taken from the same spot on a street corner, at the same time every day. I thought that was cool.
posted by disgruntled at 3:35 PM on March 24, 2006

I'm downloading it because my poor old iBook can't cope with a page containing a 27MB embedded file, it seems.

I think it would be a dumb idea if you couldn't pause it, but as you can, it's interesting to glimpse something in the stream, stop and look at it.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 3:40 PM on March 24, 2006

11,000 in 3 years? The guy's an amateur. Try that many in 3 months... Maybe I should make a tri-yearly montage.
posted by TheGoldenOne at 3:40 PM on March 24, 2006

It made me smile. I liked it, though maybe a tad slower and a few hundred less pictures. I thought it was fun trying to pick things out as the pictures sped by.
posted by annieb at 3:57 PM on March 24, 2006

I started watching with the speakers turned off- it sucked. When I turned the speakers on- it ruled! Nice job here.
posted by snsranch at 4:00 PM on March 24, 2006

I thought the Hillbilly Montage to the tune of "dueling banjos" was better.

I was going to link to that, but the link in the MetaFilter thread was busted. I'm very happy you found it.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:11 PM on March 24, 2006

Yeah, the music totally made it. Cute baby y'all had this year, too.
posted by boo_radley at 4:13 PM on March 24, 2006

great job

utterly boring
posted by Substrata at 4:14 PM on March 24, 2006

Hey, finally, something fairly interesting on the boring ol' intarweb.

I kind of liked it. :-)
posted by drstein at 4:28 PM on March 24, 2006

I hate quicktime.
posted by delmoi at 4:49 PM on March 24, 2006

Wow. I don't know why, but I feel really...beautiful for some reason now.
posted by Guy Smiley at 5:06 PM on March 24, 2006

I like how you can see the guy mature from year to year.
posted by mrgrimm at 5:14 PM on March 24, 2006

Cool. I very much enjoy flicker film.

I had the exact same idea for the exact same reason, but never got round to doing it. Glad to see it done, but I would like to see it done in a single, full-screen window. Though I guess it would then be either three times a long, or three times as fast (eek).

Those who enjoyed this may enjoy some of these flicker films, particularly this one.
posted by MetaMonkey at 5:29 PM on March 24, 2006

that was great (despite having to install some itunes related software and reboot my computer three times). how much editing went into it? it seems like the order isn't exactly the same as the order the photos were taken - there's the occasional flashback. and does the rate change with the music or is that just an illusion?
posted by andrew cooke at 6:21 PM on March 24, 2006

oh and how much was taken with this in mind? seems like sometimes there were sequences that were planned to be shown as successive frames.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:22 PM on March 24, 2006

big ups.

There's something incredibly poignant about it. What would my three years look like? The pictures are intentionally snap-shots, slices of life ... yeah, most of them are banal. That's what our lives look like.

Great music, too.
posted by bumpkin at 6:37 PM on March 24, 2006

Interesting. As an art project, I made something similar, and perhaps just a little more cohesive, as it was intended to be displayed this way.

Time Lapse Camera 15mb .mov

It's part of a traveling exhibition now, here's my artist statement:


No Pictures, Please. Kodak DC-50, custom electronics, fabric. 2004.

Surveillance cameras are ubiquitous fixtures, like light bulbs or faucets. Likewise, they are subject to about the same amount of attention. Strangely, many shops, malls, stores, and public areas prohibit photography, while photographing themselves. They create an interesting condition: a record of a publicly accessible space which is completely private and unavailable. To counter, question, and upset this imbalance, I created a camera which operates in a completely inverse way; it creates a record of both private and public space- wherever I am - and makes a public record, an unedited diary of where I've been and how I've spent my time. While somewhat hampered by practical consideration (the camera couldn't see well at night, and batteries had to be charged), the results and reactions were positive.

To create the device, I acquired an old digital camera, a Kodak DC-50, and modified it to accept modern compact flash memory. The modification allowed the camera to take in excess of 1,200 photos on a single card. I created a simple timer circuit which depressed the shutter every two-and-a-half minutes. The end effect is a long stream of accountability, a record of where I was, and when. A body of approximately eight or nine hundred photos a day. I also sewed a sling and satchel for the camera, allowing it to easily be carried at waist level at all times. I wore the camera for about three months. The images available here are from the first week of its operation.
posted by fake at 9:31 PM on March 24, 2006

Reminds me of this music video by Fredo
posted by bigmusic at 10:28 PM on March 24, 2006

Although Fredo's thing is better.
posted by bigmusic at 10:28 PM on March 24, 2006

i think what i liked the most about this was that i found myself "time traveling" with just a slight movement of my eyes. i can't take in anything unless i choose to focus on one of the years. after watching one year for a while, i skip across to another year because otherwise i feel like i'm missing something. in fact, i constantly feel like i'm missing something. nevertheless, this ability to scan across years in an effortless way is an interesting contrast to how the creator has lived these three years fully. he did not have the power to 'skip', nor to so easily think of his life on a macro level. even with this project in existence, the creator is unable to see this work the way other people will see it, since he knows too much about each individual image. we constantly think of external things in broad strokes, but it's harder to see or comprehend our own lives that way.
posted by edlundart at 11:45 PM on March 24, 2006

Did anybody catch any nudie pics in there? That's the hope that kept me watchin'.
posted by dgaicun at 8:29 AM on March 25, 2006

I can see this becoming a Madison Avenue type thing soon. I was almost expecting a "Life takes Visa" slogan at the end.....And, fake, amazing concept....but, sadly, I think, as people were saying, the music thing helps. And, why specifically a lower-resolution, older camera?
posted by narebuc at 8:51 AM on March 25, 2006

Here's one I made for my girlfriend this Valentine's day (I had given her a series of these spanning the past two years on DVD for Christmas). No editing whatsoever — it's remarkable how much your mind tries to make sense of the pictures (especially with regard to lining up with the music).

I like Overshadowed's a lot, too.
posted by rafter at 9:06 AM on March 25, 2006

I think this was just lovely. There's something very sweet about seeing someone's life like that, in all its banality and all its glory.

Kudos.



[This is good]
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:37 AM on March 25, 2006

It took me a while. I was non-plussed and close to hitting 'off' in the first minute but it has a zen quality to it that develops over time. Reminded me of the Koyanisquatsi (?sp.) et al montage films.

The trick for me is to sit back and try not to hyperconcentrate, attempting to take in as many 'screen caps' as possible but rather, it was more palatable when I let it sort of wash over me. I'm sure I saw some illegal behaviour in a couple of the years nonetheless!

Good job as an art project but don't be giving it to your mother as a keepsake, she'll probably slap you and rightly so.
posted by peacay at 10:09 AM on March 25, 2006

And, why specifically a lower-resolution, older camera?

It was all I had to work with (I had a difficult enough time buying memory for it)... and it had some advantages- for example, it was easy to get it to work with compact flash and easy to interface with the old circuitry. Old means really small pictures so you can get thousands on a card. Old means you can disable the power management really easily.

I'd put it to music if I didn't have such a specific intention. I think for my purposes it might make the piece more entertaining but it would distract from the original idea.

In any case, it was a fun experiment, good results. Thanks for watching, and for your comments.
posted by fake at 11:50 AM on March 25, 2006

I agree with ColdChef. Good stuff.
posted by nthdegx at 12:05 PM on March 25, 2006