page_title: Serene Velocity
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Serene Velocity / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Ernie Gehr at a Q&amp;A session at BAMPFA in Berkeley, California, United States
context_page_description: Serene Velocity is a 1970 American experimental short film directed by Ernie Gehr. Gehr filmed it in the basement hallway of a Binghamton University academic building, using a static camera position and changing only the focal length of the camera. It is recognized as a key work of structural filmmaking and has been inducted into the U.S. National Film Registry.
context_section_description: In early 1970 Gehr was at SUNY Binghamton while Larry Gottheim was beginning to form a film department. Gottheim was impressed with Gehr's earlier short films Morning and Wait, and the two became acquainted when Gottheim replaced a damaged print of one of Gehr's works. With the encouragement of Gottheim and Ken Jacobs, Gehr taught two courses there during the summer session. He had been interested in making a film that explored "the intervals between frames–activating the screen plane from frame to frame more dynamically". One day during the session, Gehr was on his way to the film department's editing rooms in a basement and thought of the hallway as an ideal place to film. A long, plain area appealed to him as a good space to "maximize the tension between representation and abstraction".
  Gehr began shooting test footage in the basement hallway. He tested mid-range and extreme focal lengths in "bars" of 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 frames. He decided to use bars of 4 frames, projected at 16 frames per second. This would have been roughly equivalent to 6 frames at 24 frames per second, but Gehr chose a lower frame rate so that each frame would remain on screen longer, accentuating the optical effects. He was surprised by the physical effect from watching the footage and felt nauseated afterward.
  The footage for Serene Velocity was shot over the course of one night. Gehr began filming once it was dark outside, planning to take a break for several hours and finish filming during sunrise. He started by alternating between focal lengths of 50 mm and 55 mm. After roughly 60 feet (18 m) of film, he moved each of the lengths apart by 5 mm, to 45 mm and 60 mm, then 40 mm and 65 mm, and so on. He marked off lengths in intervals of 5 mm on a piece of tape and gradually moved the lengths farther apart over the course of filming. He manually recorded each frame, and without the use of a cable release his fingers became swollen from holding the shutter button. The process took longer than he had expected, and he took only one break to use a restroom and hold his head under water to keep awake.
caption: Director Ernie Gehr in 2017
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