A filmmaker got stuck in Manila during lockdown and made a beautiful timelapse film.

Martin Arnaldo, a filmmaker and LRTimelapse user that was traveling the world got locked in Manila and produced an amazing timelapse film which truly tells a story about feelings that many might have experienced in a similar way in the last year.

The difference is, that he had a stunning location with a magnificent view which allowed him to shoot the whole film right from his apartment using different focal lengths and techniques.

When Martin sent me the film, I instantly loved it. I asked him if he would be willing to publish the film here on LRTimelapse.com together with a guest post with some explanation about the process. I’m more than happy that he agreed!

Now, this is his story and film.

LOCKDOWN [Metempsychosis] by Martin Arnaldo

It’s been a year now since lockdowns began to affect the entire world. This is a film that documents Manila’s first lockdown in time-lapse. I wasn’t sure at the time what I would be doing with the footage, but I wanted to capture what I had never seen: a city like Manila, the densest city in the world, emptied of its cars and pedestrians. I shot in time-lapse to find the little pulse that was left of the city, as if I were extracting and amplifying a feeble breath of life in an environment of stillness and death.

If you’re watching a locked-down city skyline with your own eyes, you won’t see anything move – maybe just the branches of trees swaying with the wind, or clouds moving across the horizon. But do you actually realize how much time it takes for clouds to move across an empty horizon? An eternity. And an eternity is all we had left once our freedom of movement was removed.

Athens time-lapse, March 5, 2020. Sony A7RII, Metabones, Canon TS45 F2.8

Early March last year was busy for me, as I was shuttling between Athens and Istanbul to prep and shoot two commercials. This was about the time that governments began to understand the gravity of the Covid-19 situation, and there was talk of borders closing. I decided not to let the situation affect my work and forced myself to focus on what I had to do. Sometimes I can sink so deep into my work that I’ll start drowning if no one pulls me out of the water. I’m sure many directors out there will know what I’m talking about.

Istanbul, March 8, 2020. Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max

However, after finalizing wardrobe in Athens, our client there solemnly told us he had to postpone the film. He could not take the risk of the celebrity or any one of one of us getting sick. That night we had dinner in a completely deserted restaurant. I had never seen an empty restaurant in Athens, and that is when it started to dawn on me that something big was happening.

The Istanbul shoot was still on, so I took a flight to Turkey the next day, March 13^th. I landed in the afternoon, and called Riego, our DOP, who was in Paris. He told me that the situation was becoming uncertain, but that it was really up to me should we push forward with the shoot or not. Whatever I decided, he would stand by me. At nightfall, I learned that Turkey was closing its borders with Europe. Riego would not be able to make it here. On top of this, the Philippines would close its borders as well on March 15^th and enter a whole-country lockdown. If I wasn’t back by then, I risked being stranded and unable to get back to my family. The only flight from Istanbul to Manila that would get me there in time was at 2 AM and would arrive in the evening of March 14^th. I absolutely had to be on that flight.

The Turkish Airlines website was overwhelmed, so you couldn’t book anything online. I arrived at the Istanbul airport at around midnight. Because the borders with Europe were suddenly closed, there was a sense of panic. The lines were long as everyone there was trying to find a flight out. Luckily, our production assistant was able to book me a ticket, and I arrived safely the next day in Manila. After moving across the world so freely, I was suddenly stuck in an entirely new world none of us had seen before.

Lockdown, or [Metempsychosis] (the title of the soundtrack), attempts to capture what I felt, and perhaps many of you felt, when the world first shut down its borders in March 2020. Days and nights followed each other in a maddening monotony until you couldn’t tell them apart – an endless repetition that became almost hallucinatory.

Manila time-lapse, April 3, 2020. Sony A7RII, Metabones, Canon TS45 F2.8

In June, the Philippines opened up. By then, I had finished editing Lockdown. I put the film away, unable to watch it—until I realized about a month ago that it was going to be one year since I had shot it. I was uneasy watching it again, but it helped me re-discover those very first moments when the pandemic had hit us with all its force, and we were still reeling, trying to figure out what was going on. It is finally time to write the next chapter, so it is important to remember where we came from; hopefully, we will never have to endure this situation again.

I shot the film from the same location from March to June 2020 (with a small intro from 2016) using two Sony A7RII cameras and the internal time-lapse app. The stills were assembled with LRTimelapse 5 (thank you Gunther Wegner!) and Adobe After Effects. The real-time footage in June was shot with a Blackmagic Pocket 6 (thank you Raffy Yllana!). Aude Nguyen Ngoc played with some of the clouds on Autodesk Flame, and the sound design was created by Yohann Bernard. The music was made by Vix Neiv (Pikimup Records), and the track is called “Metempsychosis.”

Enjoy watching Metempsychosis:

Martin Arnaldo was born in the Philippines and schooled in France. He went on to study in the UK (Oxford University), United States (Boston College) and France (L’EHESS). His attention to detail, visual narrative and strong background in beauty has led him to shoot films across the globe.

Please leave a comment for Martin below, if you liked the Film or have any questions!