Slow Movies: A proposition

I have nurtured an enthusiasm for “slow movies” as a way of filming scenes which I think lend themselves to quiet inspection but also for the sort of gaze which might be called “meditative”. I find myself staring at, say, flowers or stained glass windows. To say I “zone out” catches some of what happens, but equally it would be true to say the opposite: that I “enter into” such scenes. Ah well, I imagine most people know these moments or events and won’t need me to bang on about them.

What follows is an approach to capturing slow or meditative movies.

A “proof of concept”
I have shot, edited and posted here a couple of amateur slow movies. They are a faltering “proof of concept” for an enterprise which I am not equipped to bring to fruition. My idea is that such slow movies might be appreciated in aesthetic terms,  but also as in some way meditative. My indispensable companion on these filming trips (and some long or steep hikes) was the geographer and cartographer, Huw Dobson. I would have been lost without him.

Slow movie rules
The movie is composed of separate shots (or scenes); in each of these, the camera doesn’t move at all, though one or two focus-pulls are permitted; each scene is at least 30 seconds long, but the sky’s the limit; there are no fades – no fancy effects. (I rather deprecate background music or any other effects.)

No “narrative arc”
The scenes in a slow movie do not add up to a documentary account of a whole scene. I have a feeling that anything like an all-encompassing narrative arc detracts from the meditative value of a slow movie. But anyway, these are fragments, not the whole story. 

Intimacy vs inaccessibility: digital solutions
Digital still or moving images can take us to places we can’t physically reach, and uniquely confer intimacy when we get there. For example, even the Meadow Stream and the Mountain Stream in the amateur slow movies below were not easy to get to, and couldn’t accommodate much trampling. At another extreme, my beloved church stained glass is usually not available for close inspection. A cherry-picker (or a step ladder) and a digital camera can fix that. They could produce zoomable images, and thus deliver both accessibility and intimacy. The result would also be ripe for slow movie treatment.

Authenticity, imprimatur, monetisation
There is a problem of authenticity, of course. My proposition is that a putative slow movie enterprise could work with institutions or individuals who own a scene, and who could assert that the scenes depicted are genuine. This is to ensure that copyright is at work, and provide a route to monetisation.  Plagiarists of any sort could do their worst (or best), but they couldn’t provide specific imprimatur as to a real place in the same way as a property-owner could. I see landowners (of wild or landscaped scenes), or the owners of buildings (perhaps with stained glass), partnering with the maker of slow movies to mutual advantage.

RDN’s test Slow Movies
These are technically rather feeble. The shots are very variable as to length. (However, that serves to remind us that any individual slow movie could have several versions, different as to overall duration, or the number and length of scenes, or the presence of live sound or music).