Assigned site: Elevator
Theme: How elevator connects different parts of a hybrid city?
Director: Zhang Binyue
My assigned site is Elevator. I shot this video in my hometown Chong Qing, a municipality in mainland China. Chongqing is the only municipality in central and western China. Because of its location, it is not a relatively high developed municipality. It ranked 15th in the country for GDP in 2019.
The place represented in the video is Building 1, Phase 3, Xiduhui, Xi Street. It is located near Chong Qing University and Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. It is a typical building in my hometown Chong Qing. This kind of building usually has very high floors, with some elevators inside it. Many individual merchants would like to choose to run a business inside this kind of building because of the low rent and crowds around it. Therefore, the audience can find that there are many kinds of business inside one building. On the first floor, there may a hotel, while on the second floor, there may be a restaurant. Many different types of places gather on one narrow floor, in one building. It is the elevators that are the only connection between these different kinds of business. This video will provide an insight into the hybrid building and how the elevator connects these different parts of this building.
Method of Conducting the Research
I chose this building for two reasons. First, it is located in downtown Chong Qing. It can on behalf of the normal situation of buildings in downtown Chong Qing. Second, it has 23 floors, which could show the characters of this kind of building more clearly.
To show the role of connection in the hybrid building of the elevator, this video doesn’t mainly focus on the elevator itself. It doesn’t intend to show the structure or the exterior of the elevator. Instead, it attempts to represent the elevator as a vehicle. This video focuses on traveling through this building, and the elevator is the transportation method of this travel. Therefore, most of the images in this video are the scene of this building.
This video attempts to give the audience a feeling that they are traveling through this building by themselves. The angle of the shot tries to simulate the perspectives of humans. For example, this video mainly contains three parts: an overview of the exterior of this building, the scene inside the elevator, and the scene outside the elevator. In the first part, one subsection is that the camera shows the moving ground, and then the camera raises to a higher angle to show the building above. This subsection intends to simulate a passerby who comes to the door of this building and then looks up to this building. This feeling allows the audience to think that they are now standing on the floor of this building and are using this elevator to view the scene.
To show the complex components of this building, I shot at each floor of this building taking one elevator. Standing in an unchanged elevator, the audience sees the elevator door opening and closing. Each term, the places outside the elevator are different. It seemly that they are sitting on a tour bus.
Reflection
It is very unbelievable that in one single building, there could be so many kinds of places. Before I direct this video, I conduct field research in this building. I pressed the button on each floor and see the different scenes outside the same elevator. If these places can be put on a long street; they can form a bustling shopping street.
This kind of building is not unusual in Chong Qing. As mentioned above, although the country has emphasized the development of the western city of mainland China, Chong Qing hasn’t developed completely yet. The result is the soaring housing price. Under these circumstances, many individual merchants can’t afford the high rent on the business street. The choice for them is to run business in these buildings which have relatively lower rent.
Meanwhile, these buildings can to a certain extent reflect the daily life of a person living in Chong Qing. The building contains places for working, living, eating, and relaxing, as the video represents. It reveals that Chong Qing is not a fast-paced city. Besides working, their life contains more things. Magically, different parts of a hybrid life can be connected by an elevator.
Binyue Zhang 3035845693
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The overall concept is interesting. Perhaps the findings can be presented in a more systematic manner and made more evident through the video. For example, it is not always clear what are the uses on each floor, and a summary of the types of uses would be useful information for the viewer. You can also show more clearly in your text how your references are relevant. To make the point that the elevator is what makes such building types possible, reference to buildings before the invention of the elevator could also be helpful.