Sunset Strip lightbox
Exhibition text
Taken from Sunset Strip production journal
Strip x
6 January 1995
At the end of January I got hold of a new sample of 35mm
film. I used my
sketches of a dazzling sunset on the 6th of that month as a
reference
for cutting this sequence into the film strip with a
scalpel. We'd had a
long run of rain and gales over Christmas and New Year.
Then on the 6th
of January just after 4 o'clock the sky was pierced by
needles of light,
before clouds moved in and it was winter again.
Strip 8
8 March 1995
Cold quick stormy sunset. Huge sheets of cloud and colour
sweeping
across the sky, followed by a shower of soft hail and
thunder. This
strip is made from magnolia petals picked from the tree I
passed on my
walk up to Plymouth Hoe, cutup Polaroid photos of the
setting sun, and
crazed black ink.
Strip 9
13 March 1995
Mottled light. Camouflage sunset of cracked Polaroids and
black ink,
glimpses of the sun setting behind cloud. Seen at 24 frames
a second
this sunset strip creates a flickering iridescence.
Strip 12
18 March 1995
Skeletal sun, finger printed on mummified magnolia petals.
Strip 14
5 July 1995
A bruised, overcast sky all day. The air is dim and thick
with moisture
but it won't rain. Gulls nest on rooftops among the
chimneys and squawk
like mad babies. Hiding indoors to escape the heat and
humidity, I glued
net stocking onto a strip of clear 35mm film overprinted
with black and
blue OHP pens.
Strip 15
22 July 1995
Fireball. My eyes scorched by the solar wind. Last night I
dreamt that I
cut myself and my blood flowed into a foaming pool of
orange bubbles.
This strip is magnolia petals cut into circles then pressed
into
textured lacquer.
Strip 1
27 September 1994
Signs and hieroglyphics. Seeing things. Letraset, lacquer,
ink and dye.
Hallucinogenic high pressure particles. The after effects
of staring
into the sun.
Strip 2
29 October 1994
The clocks go back and we slide into winter, the sea milky
with silt
washed down from the moors. I cut open a Polaroid
photograph I'd taken
of the setting sun and stuck it onto the 35mm film strip
with lacquer,
ink, net and blood.
Strip 6
14 November 1994
Blue OHP pen finger-printed onto coloured lacquer. The ten
minutes it
took for the sun to set today are compressed into 12 frames
of film,
half a second on screen. A heart beat, one step in a
journey that lasts
365 days.
Making the film:
I spent a year observing each day's sunset from 1 September
1994 to 31
August 1995. I made notes and time-lapse drawings of the
successive
changes in the sky as the sun set. For reference I also
took a Polaroid
photo every day of the moment just before the sun slid
below the horizon
or behind a bank of cloud, the moment just before day
becomes night. I
took a photo even when it was raining and there was no sun,
just wind
and water.
During the year I made a series of 35mm strips during the
year of
sunsets, trying out different techniques and film stocks.
All my test
strips are 12 frames long, so each sunset lasts last for
half a second
when viewed at the speed of a cinema projector.
To make the film over 4000 images were created on a
continuous strip of
35mm film, using a variety of materials such as magnolia
petals, net
stocking, lacquer and ink. I also fed the film strip
through a
typewriter and typed the title and credit sequences
directly onto the
film frames. Sunset Strip is a day-by-day animated diary of
a year's
sunsets, a dazzling expression of the visual music revealed
by 365
setting suns.
Sunset Strip film credits
Director/producer/animator: Kayla Parker
Sound: Stuart Moore
Dubbing mixer: Paul Roberts
Funded by an Arts Council of England and Channel Four
Animate Award