Production history around: 3 Seconds at Momus

Today I will be going over my film ‘3 Seconds at Momus’ and how it was made.

The idea to make the film happened on the day it was filmed, the 28th of June 2025. In the past I have created pieces which were ‘I am going to go out with my camera, follow some rules and by the end of the day I will have a film’. My favourite pieces I have made like this so far are ‘After Images’ and ‘After Images (2)’.

While I say the idea formed on that day, the conversation around using chance to dictate edit order has been floated a few times in the past, both by my wife and PhD supervisors. So, it was bouncing in the back of my mind as something to eventually get around to. It is a technique that a lot of ‘classic’ experimental filmmakers played around with.

The original plan was: film chunks that were 3 seconds long (no longer, no shorter). Mix them around. See what happens.

The 28th of June 2025 was a nice, sunny day. I started filming bits before we left, including what my plan for the film was.

At 17:30, my wife Isobel and I arrived at Café Momus. Café Momus is a venue in Stonehouse Plymouth, which hosts a lot of local art events, as well as chess nights, cultural gathering, and whatever else is going on. The first time one of my films was ever screened, was at Café Momus.

The 28th of June was a cool day as well, because Café Momus was hosting a bunch of performances in support of ‘Hear Me Out Music’.

Other than wanting to support local creatives (especially Noodlez and The Spoils Collective since I have seen both many times in the past and they are great), I thought that it would work well for this film. The idea of jumping randomly between performances sounded interesting, and I like ‘unplanned collaboration’ regarding chance exploration.

Regarding ‘new’ talents (as in new to me), I also really liked ‘Plympton Sleepover’ — they had great energy. Other than that, not much to say about the day other than it was fun to see everyone.

When I got home, I started to edit the thing. My plan was to take images, and put them in the timeline as temporary ‘waypoints’. 3 second long images, that could be copied and pasted until one of the timelines was filled with these chunks. In Sony Vegas, when you click near the start or the end of a clip, it snaps to the start/end point. That means I could easily click and snip along the timeline at the 3-second intervals without having to manually check how many seconds it was.

All combined, I filmed for an 1 hour and 40 minutes. Within 1 minute, there were 20 clips. This means there were roughly 2000 cuts made along the timeline. This took forever.

I really struggled with making the clips completely random. Clips kept being adjacent. I shuffled the clips around again and again, but it kept happening. Though this would be the same with a deck of card in general. There is no Sony Vegas shuffling tricks as far as I know.

I like though that pockets of moments stayed glued together. I like that it feels like moments have a sense of gravity. That they hold onto one another.

Because the film was over an hour long, I decided to split the shuffled decks in half, and layer them on top of one another, with the top clips being transparent. Because they were all (meant) to be 3 seconds long, I thought that they would have random pairing that (should) work perfectly.

Unknown to me, accidental mutation errors were occurring when cutting the clips. That ‘snap’ I was talking about earlier only happened a majority of the time, meaning that some of the clips were just shy or over 3 seconds. Also, when clips were shuffled, accidental overlaps and gaps occurred. There appears to be an instance of repeated footage too. I imagine that is a ctrl+C rather than a ctrl+X situation. This became very apparent when the clips were on top of one another. In the end, I decided to embrace chance.

I really like that this exercise revealed some cool coincidental moments. It allows the footage to collaborate with itself to create something new and interesting.

It makes me realise that when I am filming stuff, I have specific methods of how I capture things. That I have internal, unrealised rules that apply across subjects.

It creates some fun scenarios, like Noodlez scaring all of the seagulls!

But it can also make some unexpected narratives. A star overlaying Noodlez.

Same with a sun… also a star.

I feel like it is safe to say that Noodlez is a star.

The crossing lights overlapping the various artists is fun too.

Lights that allow safe passage.

The idea that artists are transmitting their thoughts to people. Art is a way to visualise the unseen.

But also that maybe art can be about consumption?

And that consumption takes many forms.

And so does art (links nicely to my Graffiti piece, performance and street art are both ephemeral).

Isobel is watching.

And she is listening.

And the words linger on her mind.