Could you present the idea behind the film?

I stumbled upon these recordings on the NASA website and got interested. It was made by six cameras positioned on two rockets on a space shuttle. The cameras recorded the whole launch into space, until they dettached and splashed down in the water. The recording was presented from multiple angles and it was very confusing to get the sense of space. I started to edit the material to understand more about the recordings and to get a clearer idea of what was happening.

Is that how you came up with the editing structure of three cuts per second?

I can describe what I did in one sentence: I had put the cameras in a row and edited the footage every nine frames, which is a bit qicker than three times a second. I wanted to make the film fast and rhythmic, while leaving the image as recognisable as possible, but I also wanted to give a sense of having a simultaneous view around. I tried different editing patterns, but this one proved to be the most logic. It was still fast, but the pace didn’t distroy the image of the event. I didn’t want to manipulate the editing structure too much because the material itself was so amazing that making it even more powerful seemed somehow fake.

The film has a two part structure: one is during daytime and with the sound, while the second part is during the night time and silent.

The first part with the sound is very strong and confusing. You have no idea what’s happenenig and you have to imagine the whole event. The second part is calmer and you can anticipate what’s going to happen. I thought it was good to give the viewer an opportunity to experience the whole trip again, with eyes that already know what happened.

Did you leave out the sound in the second part because you wanted to make it less distracting?

Not only less distracting, but I also wanted to create a synestetic sound through visual structures and cuts. Its something similar to old structural films in which you can imagine the sound just by watching them. And I don’t mean the sound like music, its more like a melody that arises from the cuts and the pace of the film. That is why I did the first part in a rhythmic way: there is a musical structure, beat and rhythm to it, while the second part is more for the audience to imagine the sound, whether through remembering the sound from the first part, or imagening something on their own.

A lot of your films deal with the limits of perception. Is this also the case in Endeavour?

Yes, ofcourse. I think it’s important to put different perspectives on daily things and everything we see, to challenge the way you think and percieve stuff around you. This way of thinking is very inspiring. In the first part of Endeavour you only see flashes of information, and you can’t even process everything you see. In a way it urgess you to watch the film for the second time.

By Mario Kozina