Four in the Morning

Just completed my first short form documentary piece for my Documentary Field Production course here at University of California, Santa Cruz. 

I don't normally document via videography but this experimental piece was super eye-opening to create. Definitely pleased with the outcome and not as intimidated by video documentation anymore! 

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Four in the Morning

“Did you ever notice that four in the morning has become some sort of meme or shorthand? It means something like you are awake at the worst possible hour.”

-Rives, American Poet

4 o’clock in the morning… a time when the night owls have lay to rest, yet the morning birds have not yet risen. Night shifts end by 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. and morning shifts begin at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. 4 o’clock in the morning is an “absent” time, and thus a time typically socially unobserved.

Four in the Morning is a audio-visual representation of the city of Santa Cruz, California at the hour of 4 a.m. Featuring the voice of Brandon, the local 76-Station graveyard shift cashier, the film documents the public and private spaces of Santa Cruz during a time of either slowed or absent social and commercial bustle. From the vacant streets, to the florescent interiors of the 76 gas station, Four in the Morning works to juxtapose occupied and unoccupied environments in order to illuminate the unique characteristics of the hour, 4 a.m.

John Rives, a contemporary American poet and author, graduate of University of California, Santa Cruz and veteran TED speaker began exploring the hour of 4 o’clock in the morning in 1996. Struck by the poem, “Four in the Morning”, by Wislawa Szymborska, the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner for literature, Rives set off on a decade long cultivation of the cultural significance of the hour, 4 a.m.

From the 1500’s through the 2000’s, from Russia to the United States, from literature to popular culture, 4 a.m. is a reoccurring cross-cultural motif that has been universally accepted as the “absent” or “lost” hour. 4 a.m. is a “time for inconveniences, mishaps, yearnings”, a time for utter human singularity or complete human absence.

Through it’s audio-visual soundscape, Four in the Morning highlights it’s ambient sounds and vacant street-scenes by incorporating incremental amounts of narration and visual profiling. This relationship between sound and image illuminates the unique differences between public and private spaces during the hour of 4 a.m. At most hours in the day a variety of audio-visual characteristics are shared between public and private spaces (i.e. human and automobile traffic, alarms/signals, natural elements, conversations, etc.), but 4 a.m. is seemingly an hour where these sounds and images become scarce and more divided. Four in the Morning documents how this division of the senses may seem strange, unknown and even erratic in nature to the typically untrained 4 a.m. ear.