Having decided a couple of weeks ago that my printing experiments hadn't provided the best solution for representing time, I wanted to attempt another method.
Through the printing methods, it had become clear that there was too much information to be displayed in one flat, static layer – it simply becomes too crowded, and it is unclear which lines and shapes represent which time periods or which types of presence on the site. One way to move away from this is to have flat, static layers, but several of them. This is what I have contained within my Illustrator files; my redrawn maps as individual layers. Likewise, the 'slides box' idea [see blog post Oct 23, 2019: Representing time: slides box idea] which I sketched out is based on this same principle. The other way is to move to a dynamic medium which actually shows the passage of time – film or animation.
Creating the film
Film is not something that I have previously really worked with. I began the process by watching some introduction and tutorial videos for Adobe's Premiere Pro and After Effects programs. After trying out some things in both programs, it became apparent that After Effects was much more suited to the task that I was trying to do, so I began importing my drawings into this and beginning to lay things out.
At first, I simply laid out the eleven layers that I had drawn and then coordinated them with the timeline so that the newer layers faded in over the previous layers over time. I decided to work at a temporal scale of 1 second in the film being equal to 1 year of the site.
After I had done this, I then learned how to add a time clock and customise it so that the year was displayed, changing each second as the film went on. Once this was done, I had accomplished the primary goal of this exercise – creating something which clearly showed the how the site changed over time.
Improving and adding to the film
With this in place, I then wanted to try and make the film more informative, enjoyable and visually pleasing. I decided to add two things which would help achieve this – text succinctly describing key events in its history, and photographs visually showing what the site actually looked like over the years.
The other thing which was lacking with the film was that the maps were rather static for long periods of time and then changed quite dramatically from one layer to the next in some cases. To amend this, I decided to manually interpolate between each of the layers, by changing elements one by one – for example, removing one building, then adding another, then altering the road etc. This was partially based on guesswork of what order things changed, but was influenced by all of the historical information that I had collected about the site and when the dates of things changed, and by referring to the historical photographs. It was a very long and laborious process, but the result created a more dynamically changing map, which made it a worthwhile endeavour.
A compressed version of the film at its current stage of development
Reflection
I am really pleased with the outcome of these efforts. It seems like it can be a very effective way for me to show the site evolving. As my project develops further, I would intend to add to this film to take it into the future, and show how my proposal will gradually expand over the site in that time period. This approach seems good to me, as the film will then become a piece of historical analysis as well as the key piece of work to convey my proposal, and it will transition seamlessly from one into the other. Because my proposal is developing out of research in the history of the site, this seems fitting – it should be a continuation, more layers being added onto the historical ones, rather than an abrupt, clear-cut change to the site, divorced from its historical context.
Regarding things to improve, I think that I need to experiment with thickening the lineweights of the maps. In the video above, the lines come across as not very smooth, due to video file-size limitations for uploading onto this platform. If the lines were thicker, then this may be less apparent. When I export the video at full resolution, the lines appear smooth, but the file-size is prohibitively large. These issues are merely a result of me not being experienced in film and animation, and thus I have been working in my normal way, where printing is the end goal. As I work more with film over the course of the rest of my project, I expect that I will learn the better ways of working within this medium, leading to better outcomes.
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