THE BLOOMING FLAME LILY

The Blooming Flame Lily was a project I created with the task of making a film. Inspired by the continuous spinning scene in the Jaandheer Somali dance, in my eyes it looked like a stop-motion dream. I did more research to have a stronger concept, and during my research, I came across the Flame Lily, an indigenous flower to the Horn of Africa. The way it bloomed was like that of the spinning scene I saw right before me. I executed this vision with Premiere Pro and reduced the frame rate as well as the speed of the video. When one has a dream or deja vu, it's never really clear what you're seeing half the time, and I wanted to portray that in this short film. By layering video clips and tweaking the opacity, I achieved my goal, sort of a double-exposure situation. When it came to picking a sound for this video, I had to be very picky because the sound had to ascend the exact way the spin went not just abruptly and one that doesn't end abruptly, so that I could edit it to fade out easily.