The 1 Second Everyday project continues! This past month was marked by thousands of miles of travel, plus my dear brother’s wedding. The numerous shots of planes are meant to convey what an intense month it was, but by using them, I was unable to use any other seconds from those memorable days. Quite the conundrum, and one of the limits of the project (i.e. conveying two ideas from the same day). Another limit is trying to convey the momentousness of a wedding using only one second. I wish I could’ve “borrowed” seconds from other, more boring days to use instead, but I do ultimately feel that that ends up betraying the spirit of the project.
I also tried something new: adding music to the proceedings. Some observations on this:
- I agree with an earlier observation I blogged about that music totally sets the mood for the entire video, regardless of what the mood for these seconds actually is. While each second differs dramatically in tone, the music sets a single tone for the entire thing.
- The video with no music is able to convey a sense of momentum, just by the perpetual, continual change of the sound of each 1-second clip. It takes us inexorably into the future. The video with music is unable to do this quite as effectively, but it feels like it conveys an entirely different type of momentum altogether.
- In general, I think the type of music you can use for this situation is either really pensive/somber, or really upbeat and happy. Anything in between (e.g. hip-hop, folk music, etc.) just feels “off” to me, but your mileage may vary.
- The track I used was Dave Porter’s “Matches in the Pool,” off of his Breaking Bad soundtrack. I recorded a podcast about the Breaking Bad soundtrack that you can listen to here.
I’m undecided as to whether the final video will include music, so I’ll most likely still end up producing two versions of it. Your thoughts are welcome.