Tag Archives: slit scanning

Totally Bizarre Experimental Video Explores Slit Scanning

Totally Bizarre Experimental Video Explores Slit Scanning video art slit scanning

Whooooooooaa wait what? Welcome to the bizarre world of slit scan photography, a special effect created mechanically or digitally that results in warped and wobbly images. How does it work? Here’s my armchair filmmaker explanation: while regular photos and film give you a full frame image of a single moment in time, slit-scan photos and films capture the world just one line at a time. This results in a two dimensional image where one dimension is continuously (but still chronologically) displaced. Or something. This is by no means a new invention, slit scanning has been experimented with for decades and was even used extensively by Douglas Trumbull in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey back in 1968.

In this video by French filmmakers Adrien M / Claire B, two subjects engage in a surreal but highly entertaining dance through the warped fabric of space and time, made all the more wonderful with music from Beirut. (via the curious brain)