VIDEO ESSAY: Fast-Mo: Fast-Motion Sequences in Film

I remember, as a kid, watching The Three Stooges on TV and
always feeling a little baffled to see the Stooges springing
back up from the ground at a hyper-motion, cartoonish speed; these
singular fast-motion moments usually followed a bigger gag, like one of the
Stooges being set on fire or bitten by a large animal. Still, even as a
child, it was quietly unnerving to see human beings moving faster than they . . . should.
The fast forward motion was more acceptable in cartoons like Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner, for
example. In real life, however, people don’t move like that. But in film and
television, this fast motion effect has become more popular as years have
gone by—especially when one considers how prominent time-lapse photography has
become—so there must be an important reason for that.

In Leigh Singer’s dazzling new video, he explores the
visual rhetoric of the fast motion effect by grouping films together by shared themes and visual motifs. There are the pistol-slinging cowboys
of the Wild West in The Ballad of Cable
Hogue juxtaposed against the kinetic, gun-wielding rabble-rousers of Baz
Luhrmann’s updated Romeo + Juliet. Also,
there is the meta-grouping of film clips from Funny Games, Click and Caché. Each of those films visually
demonstrates the power of the fast-forward effect via an actual remote control. In Funny Games the remote control is used
to undo a fatal act, in Click it is used
as a time travel device, and in Caché it
is used as a plot-fueling investigative device to discover who has been sending
mysterious surveillance videotapes. (Note: what other video supercut
appropriately mixes an Adam Sandler comedy with a Michael Haneke film?) As
Singer’s video blazes (fast) forward to the tune of Gioachino Rossini’s
“William Tell” overture finale, it becomes clear that Singer is fascinated with
how silly we look when we’re depicted in this fast forward motion. If slow
motion dramatizes the moment, then fast motion injects a comic surge to the mise-en-scène.

Curiously enough, after a couple of viewings, I personally found the
video to be deceptively powerful in its implications of the way we process the
concept of time, especially with cinema. When speaking of the moving image in
cinema, film historian Ivor Montagu once said “No other medium can portray real
man in motion in his real surroundings.” The cinema itself is an art form that
manipulates time in more ways than one. For one thing, it freezes time: actors
are immortalized and live forever on movie screens big and small. Yet, at the
same time, it makes our perception of time decidedly pronounced. When we watch a movie, we’re subconsciously convinced that we’re seeing actions
happen in real time. But it’s not real time. The motion picture itself is
moving at a rate of 24 (or these days 30) frames per second; those are 24
captured moments—24 instances of actions or feelings that have already
happened. Still, this notion of time we won’t get back is remedied by
having at least captured some of it on film. Likewise, that fleeting concept of
speed, or the future even, is validated and realized by the fast-motion visual
effect. In our own lives, time is something we really can’t control; it passes
by with a relentless fervor. Therefore, the fast-motion effect is a
demonstration of tremendous power. If the cinema is our duplicate (or projected)
reality, then the fast motion effect represents our god-like ability to
manipulate time’s reality. It’s a unique opportunity. The kinetic speed of
the fast-motion effect is a universal touchstone; it transcends language and
culture barriers. It’s a visual representation of the voracious thirst driving life. It pushes us forward, even when we’re afraid to take that leap, because
in life, there is no rewind button.–Nelson Carvajal