During the first segment of "To the Beat," the red images in the mid-ground with the black background and the almost neon light look moving along to the beat of the music kind of reminded me of an abstract look at city life in a large, industrialized city, with the moving vertical lines going across the screen at varying rates and in varying numbers almost looking like pedestrians at a crosswalk or something like that. It was hectic, congested, and got my pulse going a little faster like life in a quickly moving city would.
However, as the beat continued on and the images began to change, it was more and more difficult to really understand what was going on in the film, and this really forced me to pay more attention to the image itself and just let the background music be just that, background noise. Surprisingly, there were a lot of elements included in "To the Beat" other than just painting and scratching, which I had expected since it was going to be our focus for that particular class period.
There were images of people at different stages in life doing different things, and then, once again, my brain tried to analyze all of the different colors, images, and all of the other elements to try to make sense of what was going on in the film. The narrative filmmaker inside of me wanted to make the images I had been seeing into some kind of story or linear progression, which I often find myself trying to do with most narrative films as I visualize how the story falls together.
When the fractured phrase, "This Not Mean A Thing," flashed up on the screen in the final frames of the short, right before the end credits, I realized that my brain had been putting far too much thought into trying to analyze the clip instead of just appreciating it for what it was. Overall, I had enjoyed the aesthetic experience provided by the clip, and I thought that the colors and images worked well with the soundtrack, even if I had spent a good portion of the time trying to piece together a story or explanation that may or may not have been there.
