I saw the roaring waves of the Black Sea, I saw the Kurit Avenue of Ephes, I saw the gaze of Father Kemal on the red flag of the stars and the moon, I saw the blue of the Aegean Sea that froze the figure of the angler in time, I saw the hot air balloons scattered like stars in the sky of Cappadocia, and the birds flew by, leaving the shadow in the eyes of the pilgrim Muslims, in the clear eyes of the young people of the holy city.
23 days, 3500 kilometers, 2TB highly compressed format material, condensed into a three-minute length, as soon as it was launched, it became a hit on Youtube and Vimeo, gained millions of retweets in a short period of time, and won the honorary title of Vimeo's 2014 ANNUAL TOP1 Work.
Watchtower of Turkey
Yes, today I'm introducing you to a short film, Watchtower of Turkey, shot and edited by Italian cinematographer and director Leonardo Dalessandri. This is a short video clip of tourism, but the difference is that this work has no text. Its biggest feature is the aesthetic lens, beautiful music choices and dazzling transition editing, and the matching editing of this new "moving" transition combines the phenomenon of human eye movement, making people feel as if they are in the scene. Of course, this article will not give readers a pull-out explanation, as an introduction, I hope that after reading this article, you will be interested in enjoying this world-class masterpiece.
Directed by Leonardo Dalessandri
About the director
The author of the film is Leonardo Dalessandri, a 30-year-old Italian photographer and director who studied at the film school in Parma, Italy, and after graduation worked as an assistant to the famous Italian photographer Filippo Chiesa, producing many commercials and music videos. Gradually, he began to direct his own work. He has made documentaries and commercials around the world, made promotional videos for national tourism agencies, and made music videos.
Exterior shooting configuration of Leonardo Dalessandri
The shooting of "Turkish Watchtower" was done independently by Leonardo Dalessandri, using panasonic GH3 and entry-level GoPro3, MacBook Pro2013 computer and two LaCie Rugged portable 2TB hard drives. Most of the video footage comes from the GH3, which comes with three lenses: a Lumix 12-35 F2.8, a cheap 14-140 zoom lens and his favorite Leica 42.5 f1.2 nocticron lens. He didn't have slides, bayonets, or stabilization equipment with him when shooting. Although there was a small tripod, he shot each shot handheld, and he also shot some of the footage in a hot air balloon in the film.
Turkish Watchtower
About words and pictures
Many domestic travel short films, even those in the top ten on major websites, are still in the same form of production as always, almost inseparable from the narrative of text and narration. But after all, travel films are not documentaries, too much text will only make people withdraw from the picture, from the city, just like the shooting of photographic works, although many people like to put words on photos, but in the end, the text is only the emotional supplement of the work at that time, and the picture itself is the main body of attraction.
"Turkish Watchtower" is a perfect example, using pure pictures and music to express the author's feelings. In the two years since the work appeared, a large number of imitations or similar travel videos have appeared, including "24 Hours in Edinburgh" (2015), "Oliver Astrologo" (2015), "A Glimpse of the Wind" (2016), "Cape World: South Africa" (2016), "Changeable Japan" (Vincent Urban, 2016) and many others.
About movie tones
The shots in the film are full of Turkish colors, and their main colors are red, beige, and yellow, and the color style of the shots is basically the same. On the one hand, it is to avoid two sets of shots with different shades or basic tones connected together, resulting in stiffness and incoherence, affecting the expression of picture content. The lens groups of similar tones are connected together to form a color match, which can make the picture more smooth.
On the other hand, this is also related to Turkey's religious culture, architectural characteristics and topography. In istanbul's Old City, the outer walls of old buildings are mostly made of earth-yellow stone blocks, plus the color of the Turkish flag is red and white, and the yellow stone pillar forest landform of Cappadocia. It can be seen that the author has also spent a lot of thought on the collocation of the color of the lens, which is in line with the characteristics of Turkey, reflecting the author's color impression of the country of Turkey during the trip.
Picture example appreciation analysis
The characteristics of "Turkish Watchtower" are also mentioned earlier: editing, music, and graphics. Leaving aside the first two parts, let's talk about how the picture of this short film beautifully shows the regional style of Turkey.
● This is a Muslim woman at the beginning of the short film, and there are many women wrapped in turbans in the film, which not only attracts the audience, but also suggests that the main religion of the country in the film is Islam. The composition of the picture does not put the character in the center of the picture, leaving some blank space on the left side, reducing the visual impact and the sense of oppression brought by the center position, the eyes of the character are still on the three-point line of the picture, and the focus of the picture composition is placed on the woman's left eye.
● The photographer took a good picture of the woman's eye light in the natural light state, and even saw the scenery in the woman's eyes, which added a bit of charm to the character. At the same time, as mentioned earlier, the main colors of "Turkish Watchtower" are red, beige and yellow, which are also fully reflected in this picture. It's a slow-motioning shot, paired with a pre-recorded soft female voice, and the next second, blinking, jumps to another shot.
● This is what it says at the beginning that "the blue of the Aegean Sea freezes the figure of the angler in time." The color of the picture is clear, and beige and yellow as the main colors also appear in the picture, and the overall tone is warmer. The blue of the sea water acts as a cool color, bringing a distinct visual experience. In the picture, whether it is the sky, sea, dock or reef, it appears in the form of large color blocks, highlighting the angler in the center of the picture.
● At the same time, the backlit shooting makes the shadow cover up the color of the angler's clothes, and the form of the silhouette also enhances the prominence of the character in the picture. This is also the reason why the color of this picture is clear: black, off-white, yellow, blue, relatively simple color composition, to avoid too brilliant colors to bring visual fatigue to the audience. In addition to the microwaves of the seawater, this picture also has a slight shaking, giving people a dream-like feeling.
● Then this picture appears, as mentioned earlier, this film uses the same tone of the camera to connect. The composition is like color selection, simple and beautiful. It is not a traditional rule of thirds, but the use of the sky, sea and beach color blocks to beautifully divide the picture, and the characters on the center line get enough focus.
● The director again uses backlighting to mask the unwanted colors on the characters' clothes. However, in this picture, the sun is on the left side of the picture, so you can still faintly see the color of the character's hair and clothes and hats. The picture follows the characters slowly riding to the right, and there is a strong sense of dreaminess and nostalgia, which makes people miss their childhood a little.
● There are many "interaction" pictures of characters and lenses in the film, including eye contact, conversation and interaction with the photographer, etc., and it is these first-person perspectives that enhance the audience's "sense of presence" behind the screen. Similar to the first picture, it is also a slow-moving picture, in which the old man looks directly into the camera and the breeze blows. Although there are more colors in this picture: off-white, yellow, red, green, black and gray, the colors are still clear. In terms of composition, the central composition is adopted, and the characters are placed in the center of the picture, which adds a sense of drama.
●The picture is shot in close-up, which avoids excessively increasing the drama and oppression of the picture, and also to retain the background light of the trees. In terms of light, although natural light is uncontrollable, it can be seen in this picture that the director cleverly uses natural light to illuminate the background, face and contour light of the characters. Like the confession of an old man, the deep eyes look at us behind the camera, as if to tell a long story.
Regarding the interpretation of the picture, everyone has a different opinion, having said so much, you may all be tired of talking about it, so directly provide screenshots of some pictures for everyone to enjoy. The 3-minute film has a total of 280 shots, so you can imagine how the editor selects screenshots under this fast-paced editing...
There are also many breathtaking large-scale time-lapse shots in the film
After seeing so much, have you ever been moved? Here is just to take out the picture separately to share with everyone, but this film of only 3 minutes and 32 seconds, its hot highlights are not limited to the picture. I hope that this film, while giving everyone sensory stimulation, can also stimulate everyone's bottomless brain hole, so that everyone can get inspiration from it. After watching this short film, I believe you will come back and leave a message (laughs).
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