When thinking, we recall the past, present, or future, always meditating on time. As a social construct, time only exists because of human rationale. It quantifies experiences of life. Whenever I look through photos or videos, I am overwhelmed with dread as I realize those moments are gone forever, only representations of them exist through photos, videos, and memories. The inability to control time makes it a common human experience of powerlessness. Humans try to savor this quality, even trying to expand it, yet it is temporary. Time rules our lives. It continues to move forward as we try to stay present and go back. Time is fleeting. The forward nature of it is inescapable, which is why I chose to title my narrative The Inescapable. I wanted to encapsulate the devastating feeling that time is limited. Through the use of Prelude in E Minor by Frédéric Chopin as the soundtrack mixed with sound effects which complement and diverge from the visuals, I choreographed a series of moments reflecting the obscurity of time in memories and the anxieties attached to the realization that time is ephemeral, ultimately coming to an end.
Prelude in E Minor (Op. 28 No. 4) by Frédéric Chopin serves to create a theme of melancholy. As a music score, the song guides the audience on how to feel. Prelude in E Minor becomes “central to the way in which the pleasure of cinema is simultaneously individualized and shared”, creating a common emotion for the audience to experience(Frith 86). It helps set the tone for the images and sound effects. Rather than individuals perceiving the montage of images and sound effects through their own lens, the song “signals what’s ‘underneath’ or ‘behind’ a film’s observable gestures” (Simon Frith 83-84). It establishes a mood, unifying the film, and instilling a sense of anxiety in the listener. The mood intensifies as the scale shifts in the Prelude builds tension. The music subconsciously points the listener towards feelings of melancholy through the use of chords and tempo. Prelude in E Minor’s beat is largo tempo, “broad, very slow and dignified” (Goodwin’s High End - Glossary of Tempo Markings). The tempo, about 42-66 beats per minute, is slower than the average resting heart rate of an adult about 60-100 beats per minute 42-66 bpm (Target Heart Rates Chart). The slow tempo produces a feeling of gravity. It brings weight and drama to the film, emphasizing the notion of melancholy. Music brings emotive qualities to the sequence.
The episodic nature of Prelude in E Minor (Op. 28 No. 4) simulates the temporality of life. In using a song to guide the narrative, the sequence of images creates a beginning, middle, and end. The song peaks at several points. These moments were accentuated by changing the volume, speed, and removing parts of the song. The analogy formed between time and the song expresses how our memories of the time are nonlinear. Recollections unfold multidimensionally.
The intricacies of memories are embodied in the montage editing style. The strategy of fragmentation forms a rhythmic pattern that augments the tempo in Prelude in E Minor while expressing the wandering and biased qualities of thought. The images functioned as a series of anecdotes, which amount to an overall dialogue about time. Reminiscing on time, humans recall moments and perceive them at different speeds, not the speed at which they occurred. When reflecting, it is easier to remember the general feeling of a moment over the specific instances. The Kuleshov effect, montages, work as a unit rather than individual scenes, meaning the “content or visual meaning is not contained within a given shot but in the arrangement of shots within a sequence” (Prince and Hensley 60). The film is meant to be critiqued as a whole, like a song or dance, not for the singular items. The images differ in longevity and waver from one scene to another. This curation of moments results in an experience of recollection. It provokes anxiety as the images speed up, with scenes in real-time, highlighting the human experience of time, which sometimes feels extremely fast or slow at the moment and may feel different when looking back. Each image adds up to the next and creates a conversation with each other.
Both the images and sound formed a pattern of people, transit, and nature amounting to the overall message about time experiences shaping our time. The organization of images that shift between each other and then pause on moments of nature and transit intend on marking movement from one experience to the next. Besides the effects of montage, those specific points operate to evolve in a forward notion like time. Moments with large groups of people seem disconnected. The combination of rapidly changing images and sound is meant to express the detachment when reflecting on time, which creates unease recognizing the disconnect from a past self.
The use of sound effects complementing the images evokes a specific moment, while the dissonance of sound effects and visuals reflects memories’ inconsistent nature. Humans remember things in biased ways, often misconstruing time. By using sounds that did not match the expected sounds of the videos, the film “achieve[s] variety, denseness, tension, and on occasion irony” (Weis and Belton 300). The disconnect between the brain’s expectations and the sound generates a feeling of mistrust. The sound of an image over a new image, allows the audience to make connections between feelings in previous images with new ones. It creates a complexity intended on echoing how memories overlap and merge, building on top of each other forming a density.
The sound effect of a heart beating increased the tension in the video. By incorporating heartbeats, a common symptom of anxiety, it unifies the audience with the tempo of the music, the rhythm of the narrative, and evokes a sense of anxiety. The sound heightens the viewers’ nerves. It tells the audience to feel unnerved. This intensifies sentimental feelings while creating tension on the beat with the music.
On the other hand, the use of sound effects from nature conceives a level of calmness. It contrasts the intensity of Prelude in E Minor, the heartbeats, and the loud chatters of people. The quality of the sound creates a “white noise”. Unless in a noise protected room, there is no such thing as silence. Even silence sounds a specific way and outside silence contains sounds of nature. The sounds of nature intend on giving the audience a moment of peace, to rest.
By inserting some pauses, like the sounds of nature or the absence of sound, it underscores the intensity of chaotic moments filled with lots of sounds. Moments of silence or “external logic that which brings out effects of discountinuity” allocate time for the audience to rest and process all they heard and saw (Chion 46). Since the rest of the film is filled with music and effects, the brief silence or calming sound of nature is highlighted. These moments bring light to the melodramatic film. It mirrors how reflecting is not always distressing, sometimes we look back with serenity and accepting time for what it is.
This short film, which combines Prelude in E Minor with sound effects of a heart beating, people, transit, and nature, with brief moments of silence, intends on inducing over stimulation to result in reflection. When feeling overwhelmed, one must accept why they feel that way to overcome it. Although at times, we may feel distressed by the temporary nature of time, there is serenity in knowing that experiences like those in the film make up our time. To recognize reality is to allow for appreciation of the present, past, and future. 

Works Cited
Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press, 1994.
Frith, Simon. “Mood Music.” Screen Incorporating Screen Education, vol. 25, The Society for Education in Film and Television LTD, 1984, pp. 78–88.
Goodwin’s High End - Glossary of Tempo Markings. http://www.goodwinshighend.com/music/classical/tempo_glossary.htm. Accessed 7 Nov. 2020.
Prince, Stephen, and Wayne E. Hensley. “The Kuleshov Effect: Recreating the Classic Experiment.” Cinema Journal, vol. 31, no. 2, 1992, pp. 59–75, doi:10.2307/1225144.
Society for Education in Film and Television. “Screen Incorporating Screen Education.” Screen Incorporating Screen Education., 1982.
“Target Heart Rates Chart.” Www.Heart.Org, https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/fitness/fitness-basics/target-heart-rates. Accessed 7 Nov. 2020.
Weis, Elisabeth, and John Belton. Film Sound: Theory and Practice. Columbia University Press, 1985.