Production history around: After Dark

‘After Dark’ was filmed during Halloween 2025, at a gig Leadworks was hosting.

Originally my plan was to go to the event being held at Images. There were a few friends I wanted to see, and that was where I had gone the previous year. Abi (who has a not-so-secret clown identity — Noodlez) asked me to go to Leadworks instead.

Abi and I are working on a larger project at the moment, and she really wanted me to meet the band Varicosa who may be a part of the project as well.

The other band shown in ‘After Dark’ is Hissy Fist (who were really good!) I was not really able to get too close to the front for the other bands playing that night, or they played when we were outside having a puff or a break from social interactions.

At the start of the night, I had originally wanted to make a piece that was similar to my pieces ‘After Images’ and ‘After Images (2)’. These are pieces I can make that are fun to shoot for, there is no real pressure, and they preserve memories. Also, just being at a gig with a camera is a vibe. Often you can capture cool people doing cool things, and they generally appreciate it. It is a scenario where many of the social conventions around cameras become kind of lax too. In terms of camera settings, the long exposure was way less intense than the ‘After Images’ films.

At the end of the night, I had 3107 images, which took up 13GB. So yes, the ‘After Images’ style, but not at Images, and on Halloween, is why it is called ‘After Dark’. It is funny how that original idea at Images now not only has a sequel, but a spinoff.

My initial thought when it came to audio selection was to use Paul Stitz’s music again since they created the song that plays in ‘After Images’ — another thread for cohesion and legacy sake. However, I could not find any tracks on Freesound that were a similar length to what I wanted.

I then moved on to Doctor_Dreamchip who’s music was used for ‘After Images (2)’. I found his piece ‘Tchaikovsky — Oktober — Korg Minilogue XD Remix’. It was not at all what I was looking for at first in terms of energy or pace, but it felt perfect in a different way. Especially because of the ‘October’ connection.

The next thing I did was I found a piece called ‘E Minor 120bpm Dark EDM Song’ by Seth_Makes_Sounds to put underneath the Doctor_Dreamchip track. I took the audio from Doctor_Dreamchip and sped it up by 125%. This allowed some of the audio peaks throughout the two songs to overlap repeatedly. Then, I reversed the audio for extra spook. I think it works better in reverse (in relation to the footage video). However, before rendering the final piece, I took the Seth_Makes_Sounds track out again. The idea of putting something in to set a tone, and then remove it, feels like it creates a kind of ‘audio ghost’. There is a pacing there, but it is hard to understand why or how. Almost as if the scaffolding remains when the building has fallen.

I know then when watching this piece, a lot of people would probably not find it ‘enjoyable’ — I am not being self-pessimistic or anything, I just have eyes and ears! I do think it is interesting though.

I am trying to move away from ‘enjoyability’, which I know makes my work less ‘consumable’. The idea of ‘audience’ bothers me. The question gets asked: “Who is this for?” Me! The answer is me! The ideas around ‘the question of audience’ feels inherently capitalist too. How can we make money with this? Who can we sell this to? I am making my work for the purpose of learning and making discovery, and as a way to affix moments in time. I want ‘the audience’ to be created via consumption of the work, not pre-emptively put into the troughs of little piggies that are going to like it most. I want people to develop their own tastes by picking up every little bit of experience they find scattered around on the floor. It is up to chance. I feel that it is cooler, and more meaningful that way.

For After Dark, scene order was decided like so: Photos taken throughout the night were pulled down onto the timeline in chunks. That way, they give the fluid motion of a moment in time, but the order of the chunks did not matter too much. I wanted them to work with the audio hellscape I put together.

Also, when adding the chunks of images to the timeline, the individual frames of the sequences would automatically be slightly shuffled — a slight quirk of Sony Vegas. This added an interesting effect.

Originally, I was going to pick and choose the ‘best’ scenes of the night, and make them work with the music, but instead I decided to layer them all, and make them all transparent. The thought process was — “wow there are so many good shots, I wonder which I have to cut” to “what if I use them all” which ironically makes the shots almost unrecognisable.

At first, I just wanted to see how it looked, putting all the clips on top of each other. “I could always Ctrl Z, let’s just check”. I liked it and kept it.

This film feels like ‘After Images’ merged with ‘3 Seconds at Momus’ in that regard.

The transparent clips make everyone feel like ghosts. Everyone’s memories overlapping, dancing and performing forever and ever. In terms of energy, it feels like the ending of The Shining.

This night is like a ghost too. A lingering feeling that persists. The energy persists. With ‘After Images’ it feels a little bit like you are revisiting a memory or a moment, but this feels like ‘trying to remember a memory’.

I like how your attention gets drawn in and out and through the video. As faces emerge, they pull your focus past what you were looking at before, and when they disappear, you pop back. It is very meditative.

There is also something very ominous about it. Especially when I am on screen. Like ‘I am capturing all of this’ in a weird control way. I wonder if this is present to other people, or just my own projection.

The accidental transition from looking through the drinking glass, to the disco ball, was interesting. Very reminiscent of ‘Circles’. I captured a few circles on this night — am I still under their spell? The number of times I dip back and forth into my writing from the past, I would not be surprised if fleeting moments like this will continue to haunt me forever. Looping, again and gain. Potentially it is something about the nature of this type of retrospective combing through time.

My hand going over JJ of Varicosa is an interesting image too. There are many ways it could be interpreted…

The frames of pure blackness at 02:26 is interesting too. This was due to chance because no clips happened to be aligned there, but it does create a bit of a jolt out of the daydream created by watching all the scenes blended together. Like a black spot in one’s memory. It feels similar to when someone is talking to you, and you only notice when they say your name — one’s attention suddenly being broken from daydreaming.

Another fun chance occurrence — After Dark starting and ending with the clips of the group of friends being merry together. It adds a weird cyclical quality to the film. It makes me think about the idea that even though all of our memories are unique to the individual processing them, we can still ‘share memories’. Phenomenon of a shared noumenon. Maybe there is something there about the emotion being shared, as well as the place and time. I am not sure.

Just out of interest sake, I did put the fully rendered clip into Sony Vegas again and reversed it all. That way the audio was the right way, and the clips were reversed — just to see how it looked. Weirdly, this version feels more melancholic to me — Even though the music comes across as more ‘jolly’, everyone going backwards just feels sad.

It could be because when people notice a camera, their eyes light up, and they smile. Or when people are preforming music, you can see them getting slightly happier. When reversed, the feelings you are left with are the joys being drained from their faces. In this version too, Isobel ‘peace signs’ to say goodbye, rather than to say ‘hello’.

On a meta, production level — a very pretty effect is created when looking at all of the clips together in Vegas. The way a memory is shown in obvious slices, kind of smeared and spread — like a panorama that acknowledges the passing of time.

A lot of this article was written in a different way from my previous ones. I am writing the article in the middle of the process, rather than just via recall. I am having so many thoughts, and it feels like a waste to lose them. Though, it does mean that actually editing this thing is taking a lot longer than usual.

For context before I bring up this next bit, when I work, I set timers and save the details in a daily Excel sheet called my TDL (To Do List — in reality it is a massive life planner). By writing this article at the same time as editing, I have this autistic-coded anxiety of “do I put the recorded time doing this as ‘filmmaking’ or as ‘article writing’”. In the end I have decided that this all counts as filmmaking, purely because I want to work on a different article as well today.

…

A ’me update’ hidden at the bottom of this article in terms of understanding my current academic plans and trajectory. It would be interesting to see where I succeed/fall short.

I have 21 articles planned in my TDL, but this is shrinking and expanding as I merge themes together, decide an idea is not worth it, or read something interesting and several more ideas come forward. Themes include ‘Idea Stickiness’, ‘Does Noise Exist’, ‘Fear of Chance’, as well as meta-process articles like my ‘Image Notes Library’ and ‘Events I have attended so far’. I am also dipping my toes into political domains like with the local ‘Flag Force’ debacle. I am worried about some of these, but I will play it by ear.

Regarding films, I am working on two larger pieces: One is about a local bathroom stall, which will have a lot of vocal collaboration. One is a big project with Abi/Noodlez, which I feel will be on the scale of ‘Bones of Tyche’, so will take a few months to emerge. There are also 18 smaller film things in the pipeline, but the same here applies as with the articles.

I have started looking academic journals — currently I am writing something for ‘Screenworks’, and have 15 other academic journals I would like to try after this — I like to have a longitudinal plan, then go at it piecemeal.

Starting next year, I would like to start attending conferences. NECS looks interesting, and it would be an excuse to visit France. I attended a symposium at Falmouth where I presented my work, and that felt quite rewarding, so doing more of that seems good. I want to do as many ‘researcher’ things as possible until any and all imposter syndrome I may feel to be considered ridiculous.

In terms of personal projects, I have started a magazine called If/Then: Chance and Creativity. The open call for volume 1 has started, and is themed around the ‘Mundane’ which for some reason my dumb brain keeps typing as ‘Mundance’ — every god damn time.

I think that’s it really!