Reference for video essay

When I heard we were supposed to find a couple of references for the video essay, I almost instantly thought about ‘Photon’ by Norman Leto. It’s a movie about the history of the Universe, life on Earth, and evolution, based on current knowledge in quantum physics, biology and other science disciplines. It also talks about civilisation, and speculates about its future.

Below you can see the movie trailer:

However, the most memorable for me was the explanation of the very beginning of things, the narrative style combined with abstract visuals.

Here is the introduction to the movie. (The movie was originally made in Polish, I translated this fragment just for the purposes of the presentation).

And compilation of work in progress of visualisations shared by the director:

Of course, there is similarity with what I’ve done so far in terms of abstract, minimalistic graphics on a black background, in this case aiming to illustrate and explain simple principles drawn from physics and biology.

There is however a certain sense of setting the stage for them, initiating them, in a specific order, from the most basic to more and more complex, building them up, so that they create a foundation for one another. It reminds me of initiating objects in the script. Perhaps it’s just something forced by logic, as I did the same in my script before I thought about this movie at all. It just makes sense.

Which reminds me of the 1 – 1 session with Abbie, when we talked about the difference between the natural and the man-made. As I see it, humans create systems in the same way as nature, and the difference is not in character but in complexity. And that’s the point. Creating a system with rules, no matter how simple, has the same principles as development of the Universe – there were a few simple rules at the beginning, building up on one another for milliards of years, so no matter they are very complex at this point.

Going back to ‘Photon’ – the narrator does not just comment on what is shown, distanced from it like in a wild life documentary, but is fully present, and seems to have an actual influence, even power over visuals. Not as a creator of this world, but as a designer of visualisations, which as he points out are purely speculative, meant to help understand things easier. The visuals are his tools just as much as his words. Thanks to this, narration feels personal. It clearly becomes his story, his version of the events.