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There are whirlwind tours of a city and then there’s filmmaker Alex Soloviev‘s whirlwind editing, which he’s used to capture the eternal city of Rome. This isn’t your average travelogue, because Soloviev has shot the Italian capital in a kinetic, fast-paced style. From the lives of the locals to the tourists to the sights, the film zooms along the city streets, through fences, over walls, in and out of churches, past markets, cafes, roads, river, and lounging sunbathers. Rather than your standard travel video Soloviev wanted to create a short portrait of the city, capturing its mix of chaos and quiet, of splendor and everyday. It means we never focus on one place for too long, instead through a complicated sequence of images and edits, a variety of camera techniques—time ramping, short hyperlapses—get synced with music and sound to invoke the city’s frenetic pace.
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“When you come to Rome the first thing you see is how chaotic it is,” Soloviev explains to The Creators Project. “People who talk about this city as sweet and chilled are not fully honest. Every city is quiet in the morning, but not every city has such massive motion in the daytime. And everything is packed with ancient architecture, narrow streets, and endless crowds. But suddenly amid all this chaos you can find, say, a really chill church without tourists. Trying to catch this mix of different feelings that lingered after a visit to Rome was behind the concept of this video. As you can see my camera, most of time, moves and zooms—the idea of using these techniques was to give the viewer the feeling of how solid this city is amongst all the chaos and short chill moments.”
See more of Alex Soloviev’s work at his Facebook and Vimeo pages.
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