Nuit Blanche Toronto 2016: Director X’s DEATH OF THE SUN

With a busy weekend, it made no sense to shoot footage of several Nuit Blanche mixed media art installations, so I picked one – Director X’s Death of the Sun, which was poised to debut October 1st, 2016, at Toronto’s Nathan  Phillips Square, smack beside Toronto City Hall.

I staked out a perfect spot, and after about an hour the giant globe finally switched from pre-show test graphics to darkness, and then the big reveal, after which the art project shifted through three distinct phases of the Sun’s demise: fiery red-orange, a translucent pink, and a swirling cold blue mass before the globe greyed, dimmed, and went out.

Smoke effects were triggered at a few junctures, and as the three phases repeated once more, I ran around the site, grabbing as much footage as possible before bolting back home and cutting the short overnight and throughout most of Sunday. The sound editing & mixing were rudimentary, but the edits had to be clean in spite of the obvious wind blusters that occasionally peppered the sound mix.

Did I go overboard? Maybe, but what started off as a fun editing project – shoot what you can, and make it work – became a bit more detailed than expected. Either way, I’ve posted the end results on my Vimeo + YouTube channels.

Vimeo:

YouTube:

Here’s also a few quick snapshots taken that night:

Two quick concluding items: in an interview with Breakfast Television, taped prior to Nuit Blanche, Director X explained part of the project’s inspiration stems from his childhood visits to Killbear Park, which is an Ontario provincial park that encompasses  many small bays, and where chunks of the Canadian Shield emerge from the dark waters and form the hard ground that reaches into the main land. I used to visit the beach area every summer with parents, neighbours, and best friends, but whereas we headed home or to a motel in the evening, Director X stayed at night, and in the (then) stillness of the night and (then) clear skies, he could be affected by the stars and nighttime imagination.

Lastly, in an upcoming post I’ll have some sample stills from the royalty-free stock footage and loops that’ll be available for purchase from Big Head Amusements, and some stills of the gear used to create the trailer’s main & end titles, including a big orange 1980s JVC KY-1900 3 Saticon tube ENG camera.

Thanks for reading,

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
Big Head Amusement