The City of Samba
I met Keith Loutit at the backstage of the YoutubePlay Guggenheim, a festival where we were both winners. Keith won with Bathtub IV and I with Birds on the Wires. The Australian photographer, of whom I was already a big fan, invited me to join forces and produce a short about Rio’s carnaval. In February of 2011 we met in Copacabana for an adventure of 6 days and 168 thousand photographs. We used a technique Keith is a master, the tilt-shift. Time-lapse shooting with special lenses, that trick the brain, thru selective focus, to think we are looking at something really small. During a whole year, we edited remotely, exchanging ideas and files between Brazil and Singapore. At the Carnaval of 2012, we released the short, which is divided in two parts: Rio during the day, with its natural beauty full of poetry and romanticism, and the Samba Schools of Sapucaí at night, a party of energy and movement. I composed the soundtrack trying to reproduce with sounds the reality transformation acquired by Keith’s lenses. Because of the success of the piece, I was invited to talk at TEDxRio+20, and tell the experience of the production. At the end of the speech, a small orchestra executed the soundtrack on stage, synched with the video. Something I had done at TEDxSP with Birds on the Wires, and would repeat several times in presentations around Brazil, Argentina and Poland.
