Video Essay: The Unexplored City
Subtitle:
What is an alleyway? It is a road or path between buildings, but what is so special about this? An alleyway is like life. You go into the alley, and you may find different turns. Walking that pathway or making that turn and you find yourself closer or no way near to your destination. It’s like life where there are many opportunities to choose from. But ultimately, you have to decide which turn you are going, or will you just stay here where you are your entire life.
An alleyway is narrow and complicated as much as life is complexed. The water pipelines above the alley, bags after bags of rubbish on the sides, …. All adds, to the complication of the alley, just like life, where you have emotions above your head, you have all these side quests to study or, or to socialize with people.
Or an alley could be dangerous. Daytime alley has limited lighting because of the air-con slot or the awning. But you can still see the graffiti on walls, or the cigarettes left behind. This is somewhere you expect one gets robbed as if you are in a movie scene. And life indeed is dangerous, in the sense that you will definitely die somewhere and sometime.
Nighttime alley on the other hand, evokes a different kind of emotion.yourself walking alone in this alleyway. Everything is stirring up in your mind. Maybe the sense of fear because of the uncertainties lie ahead. The sensation of giving up because you have nothing to loss. Or maybe depression. Life is like walking down this alley, all things are lost, until something, hope is found.
Description of theme and setting:
The idea of an alleyway begins from when there is human civilization, where huts in the past were built in proximity. The alleyway is not only a road, but also an open space for people to interact and socialize with each other. But as buildings are vertically developed, an alleyway between buildings is surrounded by gigantic concrete walls.
Narrow in the sense that building space is completely utilized for maximization of land use. The loads of rubbish, the complexed water pipelines connecting, and the air-conditioning slot adds an extra layer of complication of the already narrow space, rendering the alleyway even tighter in our eyes [1].
Dangerous because of the lack of lighting and space. The high-rise building, together with the awning, blocks most of the sunlight entering to the alleyway. Though, the graffiti on the walls or the people that are smoking are still visible. The cigarettes and graffiti somewhat resemble the stereotyping in movies, where protagonists are kidnapped in these alleyways, screaming for help but to no avail.
On the other hand, the lack of streetlights or with only grim LED lighting at nighttime creates an unnerving and disturbing atmosphere because we associate dark area with crime. Not only the dark alleyway is empty in the sense that crimes can be committed with stealth and unbeknown to others [2], but the darkness also itself confers a negative emotion and stirs up the intrinsic anger and depression of the criminal, eventually creating an urge for them to commit the crime.
Alleyway symbolizes life, where life could be full of complication, one can dictate its very own life to make a left turn or a right one. Life could also be dangerous, and that one could be full of fear in the course of one’s life. Then all he can achieve is to stay at one point and not moving. Would you take a leap of faith to enter this alley so that you may end up in somewhere closer to your destination?
Methodology:
Alleyway is chosen as my topic because it is often unexplored in terms of its description of space-time and the possible meanings behind them. In this short essay and video, I hope to bring forth the relation between alley and life. How life is no different than an alley, and living your life is like walking down an alley, with full of obstacles and complications.
I reckon the alleyway would have different features in places in Hong Kong. Therefore, I wandered around places from Sai Wan, Tsim Shai Tsui to Sham Shi Po and Mong Kok to take stills and videos. The result is that I have a collection of them, where eventually I decided to use “life” as a theme for the topic. After the filming process, I looked into different literatures, although limited because of how unexplored the topic is, for example, the difference between alleyways under historical and urban context or why is there the stereotype that we associate crimes and alleyways.
Next, for the filming methodology, I would take stills whenever I saw anything remarkable, for example the graffiti on the walls and the trash on the sides. To film the air-con slots and the water pipelines above the alley, I took a low angle shot, where it starts from horizontal level, then the camera moves 90-degree upwards as if you are looking up the sky. This accentuates how sunlight or light in general is dispersed because of the concrete walls and the aircon slots, while giving the audience an overview of the alley itself.
For the nighttime shot, I specifically filmed it during midnight to compare how differently the alley could become during different times, where there is not any people or traffic noises you can hear nor trash on the ground you can see, but just you, alone. I utilized a POV shot as if you are the one walking in darkness, then towards the end seeing lights. The contrast between utter darkness and eventually brightness brings out the meaning of hope in life.
Different stills and videos were edited into the video in accordance with the descriptions of the alley and the meaning behind. The narration adopts different tones to deepen the sensation of the audience, to allow them to immerse into the alleyway. For instance, for the nighttime shot, I intentionally speaker slowly and softly so that the background white noises would be more profound, giving the audience an idea of how the intrinsic emotion of the person is stirring up when he is walking.
Reference:
[1] Arkaraprasertkul, N. (2013). Traditionalism as a way of life: The sense of home in a Shanghai alleyway. Harvard Asia Quarterly, 15(3/4), 15–25.
[2] Cozens, P. M. (2008). New urbanism, crime and the suburbs: A review of the evidence. Urban Policy and Research, 26(4), 429–444.
Name: Choi Long Hei Matthew
UID: 3036060769
The allegory of alleyways compared to life is quite lucid in imagery, the theme is well thought through. The frame of the film also had a long vertical narrow frame, which exemplifies the narrowness of an alleyway, hence better elicit the theme of the film. The comparison and contrast between the alleyway during the day and at night is also quite important, as the lighting shadows certain portions of the narrow street, yet illuminates others. Hence, giving us a more holistic view of this unexplored part of the city. Very good work.
Your video looks into ‘alleyways’ with a poetic perspective. Your video attracts audiences by offering them with the metaphorical statements and your intonation. I think your submission is also structured as using language pattern of ‘An alleyway is …’ and supplement your expression with different adjectives that match with ordinary impression on alleyways.
Your mention of an alleyway is originated from human civilization trigger my thoughts. An alleyway could also been a product of modernization as alleyways are formed and evolved naturally and are not a designed product. I believe this process of evolution and the idea of ‘modernization’ could add an academic lens to your research rather being purely poetic. After all, we hope to see more spatial analysis on the typology of the alleyway.