The Fast City: Traveling along the Hennessy Road
The Theme
In Hong Kong, we want everything to be fast. Fast meals, fast transport, or even fast relationships. This fast paced city brings a number of people blue. According to a study conducted by Baptist University and the Mental Health Association in Hong Kong, 41% of the 2000 respondents felt incapable of doing their daily jobs in this fast city (Sun 2008). In the survey, 27% of the citizens of this fast city have experienced different levels of anxiety. Pace of life is related to both of our physical and mental well-being while people living in fast cities tend to have a higher rate of getting coronary heart disease and mental issues (Levine and Norenzayan 1999).
Streets are one of the urban spaces that can experience the fast-paced city as they are important public spaces that connect different parts of our city. A street connects other streets and they are connected to form a city. People use streets as a space for a movement to find another space (Mohamad and Said 2014). In this fast city, streets have a crucial role to let people travel from place to place. People need to walk by streets for school, for work, for family gathering, for friends meeting, etc. People in Hong Kong move fast for their own destination and seldom pay attention to things on the street. It seems that streets have an instrumental value that helps people to travel from place to place instead of having intrinsic value. When is the last time since we have slowed down in this fast city and looked around the street?
The Production
The site that I have selected was the ending part of Hennessy Road in Causeway bay and focuses on the crosswalk of it. One of the reasons was that it is one of the most hustling and bustling streets in Hong Kong with people going to and from buildings surrounding it (Kerbrat 2022). No matter day or night, it is full of people walking along and across it. While the crosswalk can show how people travel on the street to go to other places. Therefore, I believe that I can document people’s movement and interaction in the city here. In this city center, people are mostly in a hurry for their own destination and experience the fast-paced Hong Kong.
The video started with a time lapse clip of the fast movement in the city. Time lapse can capture phenomena that are too fast to be seen by human eyes (Matt 2022). Time lapse is a good way to show a long duration of clips in a limited time. Also, time lapse can show the fast movement of the people and cars moving in the city in a more visualized way.
In the video, I choose to use both first-person view and third-person view to shoot the shot. For first-person perspective, the camera is the eyes of the protagonist. This means that the audiences can look at the city from the point of view of the narrator (McGregor 2022). However, a first person point of view can only show what the protagonist has seen from their eyes but not their movement and reaction. Besides, it is harder for the audiences to relate to the message I want to show by the film (Maria 2022). Third person point of view can give a wider coverage of the characters and the setting (NFI 2023). Therefore, instead of documenting the city as a point of view for the whole video, I would like some parts of my video to show how we interact with the street in a more visual way filming how the protagonist reacts with the city. Walk fast for our destination, or slow down to take a closer look to the city.
Cowen (1988) suggested that montage connects different film shots or segments into a sequence. In the video 01:52-01:58, I have used montage for the short moments. They are the moments that I documented when I was roaming around in the city and the little details that attracted me when I was walking by the site. Montage can show the audiences multiple information in a short sequence all at once (MasterClass 2021). Montage is a suitable way for me to connect these short snaps of the city together as my purpose is not introducing those details but to quickly show to the audience what engrossing details of the city I have found, and what they may find when they slow down in the fast city. These details may not be, or are not necessary to be meaningful. But there are interesting details of streets that have added color to our city. When we slow down, maybe we can find something different, something special, and something absorbing.
Credit:
Directed by: Chiu Man Tsoi Janette
Starring: Cheung Ka Yu, Jessica
Narrator: Chiu Man Tsoi Janette
–Chiu Man Tsoi Janette 3036078261
Bibliography
Cowen, Paul S. 1988. “Manipulating Montage: Effects on Film Comprehension, Recall, Person Perception, and Aesthetic Responses.” Empirical Studies of the Arts 6 (2): 97–115. https://doi.org/10.2190/mf18-ftxe-nblh-pv98.
Google Maps. n.d. “Google Maps.” https://www.google.com/maps/@22.2803131,114.1842454,18.73z?hl=en.
Kerbrat, Adrien. 2022. “Happening Hong Kong: The Best Neighborhoods for Pop-Up Stores.” Storefront, October 11, 2022. https://www.thestorefront.com/mag/happening-hong-kong-the-best-neighborhoods-for-pop-up-stores/.
Levine, Robert A., and Ara Norenzayan. 1999. “The Pace of Life in 31 Countries.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 30 (2): 178–205. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022199030002003.
Maria. 2022. “Point Of View In Filmmaking: What Is It And Why Is It Important? | Filmstro.” Filmstro. March 31, 2022. https://filmstro.com/blog/point-of-view-in-filmmaking-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-important.
MasterClass. 2021. “Learn About Montage in Filmmaking: How to Create a Memorable Movie Montage – 2023 – MasterClass.” October 15, 2021. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-montage-in-filmmaking-how-to-create-a-memorable-montage.
Matt. 2022. “What Is Time Lapse? Deep Dive Into The Process • Filmmaking Lifestyle.” Filmmaking Lifestyle. June 11, 2022. https://filmlifestyle.com/what-is-time-lapse/.
McGregor, Lewis. 2022. “Understanding Point of View in Film and Video.” The Beat: A Blog by PremiumBeat. February 4, 2022. https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/understanding-pov-in-film-and-video/.
Mohamad, Wan Saiful Nizam Wan, and I. Said. 2014. “A Review of Variables of Urban Street Connectivity for Spatial Connection.” IOP Conference Series 18 (February): 012173. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/18/1/012173.
NFI. 2023. “Third Person Point Of View – Everything You Need To Know.” NFI, February. https://www.nfi.edu/third-person-point-of-view/.
Sun, Celine. 2008. “Four in 10 Stressed by Fast Pace of City Life.” South China Morning Post, October 9, 2008. https://www.scmp.com/article/655691/four-10-stressed-fast-pace-city-life.
The use of time lapse in the beginning of the video is a very good method in eliciting the theme of the video essay, Fast City. By exemplifying the pace of crowded Causeway Bay. The theme itself is also quite creative, encouraging reflection on how we haven’t ever slowed down to enjoy or at least pace ourselves in this machination of a city. Quite engaging yet also thought provoking.
Hello Janette! I really like your video. Your use of time-lapse creates nice visual effects that help convey your theme, and both first-person and third-person perspectives make the video more engaging. The use of montage showing short snaps of the city together also echoes the theme of Fast City. I have tried to pause the video to look at your snaps, and I appreciate that you captured beautiful corners like scaffolding and plants on the street. The call for slowing down our pace to discover the beauty around us at the end of the video also gives a positive message!
‘Street’ and ‘Fast City’ are a good pair of keywords for research. They are highly correlated and interdependent so I believe your research them actually as a lot of potential. Yet, your video is more of your response or a statement towards the urban lifestyle of Hong Kong but not a research on the selected space – ‘street’. There is not enough explanation on the linkage between why the ‘street’ and the ‘fast city’.
To improve your work, I find one of your bibliographies very helpful: “A Review of Variables of Urban Street Connectivity for Spatial Connection”. The concept of ‘street connectivity’ in this article could help you to formulate a better series of research questions and facilitate the research focus and its structure.