[Video Essay]Slow City–sidewalks in Hong Kong at Night

The video link: https://youtu.be/Ipwuax0Tjzk

Slow City

Credits:

Director, filmmaker, editor and the actress: Qu Shendi Sindy

Photographer: Qu Shendi, Chen Yudan

Sidewalks in Hong Kong, an international metropolitan, are usually packed with crowds flooding. Mountainous terrain and slopes along with high-density buildings are the main factors and common impression on Hong Kong’s sidewalks. However, the video focuses on sidewalks at night, revealing a sense of slow city that contradicts to crowded and bustling urban life and is aimed to unfold another side of Hong Kong as well as another side (slower and quieter side) of busy people living in urban life. Also, the interaction between the sidewalks and walkers is very interesting, such as how silent sidewalk with no person on release strengthen people’s isolation, loneliness and intimacy. Despite the walkers are “blind” to the urban text when considering from a higher level, they can form their understanding with fragments in the city when they slowdown in the slow city when night falls. Hence, I choose the sidewalks where few people pass by, and less decoration and neon lights are preferred to emphasize slowness, loneliness, and silence. To vary the construction of pictures and enrich the aesthetic experience, sidewalks with different backgrounds including stores on the streets and the bus stop. Few people will be in the scene instead of simply the street in order to emphasize the connection between the sidewalk and side walkers. As for the style of the video, considering the theme and my personal preference, I decide to use a quieter way to combine the emotions and ideas in the film

First and foremost, I decided the theme, slow city and the subjective matter, sidewalks. To narrow the theme down and clarify it better, I added another restriction—at night.

After choosing the theme and finishing the outline, I began to do research on the space I had chosen. Sidewalks are common in daily life and the scenes I chose were near where I lived, I tried to be more alerting to be a sensitive observant and find some good construction of a scene and interesting fragments from a walker’s perspective. Shooting some short clips was effective to keep impressions and ideas I had as inspirations for following steps. Considering the quiet theme, a quiet style will be proper, including still cameras and simpler editing. To prevent the video to be too boring in such a slow pace, I planned to use some poetic styles and soundtracks to get the theme across better and bring some aesthetic value.

The next step is to add more academic theories and ideas to enrich the content and give precise ideas. With the theme of slow city and sidewalks, theories relating to architecture/spaces as everyday narrative and slow city will be suitable and useful. Some pieces of the readings could be put into the video as voice over.

On the basis of former consideration, the most significant part came. After going through short clips I had filmed, the thesis and the collection of my ideas, I began to draw simple storyboards. I planned to use some distant view (and third-person perspective) and constructive scenes to include the sidewalks and walkers to depict the former one. As for the latter one, I decided to use first-person perspective and focus on interesting fragments in the night city that passers-by usually see on sidewalks with shaking cameras to immerse the spectators in the situation. Besides, the title and subtitles were included. (e.g. the location of the titles in the screen.)

With these basic consideration on techniques and content, I chose places in Kennedy Towns, Pok Fu Lam Road and Sai Yin Pun to film more videos. Because sidewalks are common, and sidewalks in Sai Yin Pun are quiet, those in Kennedy town include interesting fragments and the slope on Pok Fu Lam Road can provide great construction in a scene. In distant view scenes, few people will be in these scenes, but most of their feelings should be the key point in the scene; meanwhile the proportion of people in the whole scene is low. Therefore, the interaction between the people and the architecture (space) will be strengthened.

When editing videos, I also reminded myself of these designs. The soundtrack contributed a lot to the atmosphere I aimed to create as I chose Schubert’s music. Despite the fast pace in quick clips, the soundtrack could not be too noisy and rock, and jazz would be proper for the quiet but brisky style in the second part of the video. Montage was used to make the logic in the video (between the clips) flow better.

In conclusion, the distant view and third perspective are used to create the role of “observant”. The first-person perspective and shaking cameras are used to focus on the subjective itself (sidewalk) and the role of “walker. Clips shot with still cameras convey the stillness and peace while quick clips (in editing design) convey curiosity and briskness.

References:

De Certeau, M. (1984). Walking in the City. In The Practice of Everyday Life (pp. 91-110), translated by Steven Randall. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Seng, E. “Cuts through Hong Kong.” Collage + New into Old, Architectural Review (Jul./Aug. 2021): 102-107.

Abbas, M. A. (1997). Hong Kong: Culture and the politics of disappearance (pp. 63-90). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Hong, Sang-soo. (2017) On the Beach at Night Alone. Jeonwonsa Film Company

Barthes, R. (1986). Leaving the Movie Theatre 1975. In The Rustle of Language (pp. 345-49). New York: Hill and Wang.

Leung, P.-K. (2000). Urban Cinema and the Cultural identity of Hong Kong. In The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity (pp. 227-51), edited by Fu, P. S. and Dresser, D. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thomson, D. (2015). What is Cinematic Information? In How to Watch a Movie (pp. 77-94). London:Profile Books.