A beautiful spot for Open Skies explores the similarities between New York and Paris with time-lapse.
Open Skies is a British Airways subsidiary that flies exclusively between Paris and New York and to celebrate the journey the airline makes, this time-lapse spot captures the City of Lights and the Big Apple.
The two-minute ad was created by Paris-based filmmaker Franck Matellini, who shot time-lapse images of dozens of scenes in New York and Paris. Matellini then connected similar shots on a split screen.
We see a bridge on the Seine matched to a bridge on the Hudson; the bustle surrounding the Arc de Triomphe next to the Washington Square Arch; the Métro running parallel to the subway. The video progresses from sunrise to sunset, ending with a final sunrise over the wing of an Open Skies plane.
“Paris and NY, like many large cities, have a lot in common; transport, infrastructure, national monuments,” says Matellini.
“I wanted to explore not only these comparisons but also the differences, in order to expose the beauty and individuality of each. What you cannot deny is the vibrancy and explosion of character each city has and I thought split-screen with timelapse would be a good way to help convey this.”
Along with the obvious shots of the Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty, there are less obvious snippets of Parisian and New Yorker life, including shots of street art from French stencil graffiti artist Jef Aérosol compared with Eduardo Kobra’s colourful V-J Day mural in Times Square.
Matellini says he planned the shots well in advance and had more than a hundred different comparisons of New York of Paris to work with. “In reality some of the frames didn't match side by side when editing and some I needed expensive permits for which I didn't have the budget or were complex to get.”
So which one do you want to visit?
24 November 2014
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