Monday, January 16, 2012

Speaking of time-lapse cinematography…

I highly recommend the movie "Microcosmos: the people of the grass."

This almost wordless 1996 flick shows us the lives of critters that are small enough to move around between blades of grass, as we might walk among the trees in a forest.

Further, the filmmakers show us events in the meadow-forest that happen too quickly or too slowly for human perception - respectively by slowing down or speeding up the playback of the film.

I thought of this as I was reading to my son from T.H. White's novel The Sword in the Stone: for the benefit of his pupil, the not-yet-King Arthur, Merlyn uses his magic to speed up time, so the young Arthur can evesdrop on the conversations of trees (he must listen at half a year per second, or 15 million-fold time compression), or on those of rocks (listening at two million years per second).

The makers of "Microcosmos" also use a remote-controlled helicopter, with a tiny high-resolution videocamera, to follow a dragonfly in its flight.

It's an utterly beautiful movie. If you've never seen it, or saw it only as a small child (it was released in 1996) you really should find yourself an uninterrupted 80 minutes to take it in. You can get it streamed on Netflix.

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