Recently I’ve been looking at videos on YouTube of people filming in forests. There seems to be a trend where people film the same scene for about an hour with a “locked off” camera and this becomes relaxing and soothing.

The first one I watched was Blue Hour by Chrystel Lebas. The amazing element about this video is the stillness in the image and the way the light gradually changes. This makes the video very soothing, peaceful and almost meditative, as the shot pulls you in and you find that with the sound of the birdsong and the slowly changing light, that it creates a big impact. Unfortunately though, on YouTube, the it is only a clip that lasts for 6.30 mins and is of very low quality. I will have a further search of the internet to see if there’s another version somewhere else.

Another video that I found was produced by someone called “Ephemeral Rift” (obvious not their real name but a pseudonym they go by) who has produced and uploaded another “locked off” hour long shot. This is not as successful as Chrystel Lebas Blue Hour because the sound is not as good as in Lebas’s film which had the dawn chorus and the light is unchanging, which makes it a bit bland. I can see that it’s trying to reach that point of being relaxing and meditative, but for me doesn’t quite make it.