Tokyo Aglow

- Images and Music by Justin Tierney -

Tokyo Aglow is a time-lapse tour of the Japanese capital by road and rail. An automated monorail flows through Odaiba and arrives downtown. A taxi whips to converging clusters of crowds in Shibuya. Scores surge and stream, tangle and scramble. Weaving and knotting, the masses of people rhythmically engage with the machinery of modern life.
Japanese inspired chords underpin the music of the piano. Trombone, trumpet and violin map to the patterns recurrent and emergent. Crosswalk chimes, chirps and cuckoos echo into the night.

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The time-lapses were shot in raw (with a 5D Mark III and a Sony A7s) developed in Lightroom, edited and color graded with the help of FilmConvert in Adobe Premiere Pro CC. I composed the music at the piano with paper and pencil, input it into Finale 2014, recorded the music into Pro Tools in two separate recording sessions, processed the field recording in Ableton and Max MSP, and executed the final edits in Adob