“Danielle” is a five-minute video clip depicting a female face going through the aging process, which is carried out using digital manipulation. While five minutes may seem like a short amount of time to demonstrate aging, the slow, gradual changes that a woman’s face goes through show aging from a child to an older person.
In the first few years of a woman’s life, although we understand that major changes occur in about one minute in real-time, they are so gradual and seem so natural that we feel as if time has not passed at all. In fact, some changes happen so gradually that we don’t even notice them, and then, before we realize this, Danielle seems to be about ten years older.
Cherniello describes his video as “the idea that something is happening, but you cannot see it, but you can feel it like aging itself.” Using digital technology to capture the senses, in this case, aging demonstrates some of the great possibilities of art using digital media. The movement ability that new media technologies provide can give digital art an edge over traditional art in recreating the senses. This idea is not always fully recognized and used, but Cieliello shows the enormous impact that digital art can have when artists decide to stop using new digital methods to reproduce traditional forms of art and move on to something new and different from static art does not can do.
A mixture of changes and consistency on a woman’s face can represent the aging process observed by a viewer who has seen the person grow every day from a close environment – although the change is inevitable, the person we see and know remains recognizable throughout the clip. This, together with the impeccable quality and use of digital editing, is what makes “Daniel” such a success.
Anthony Cerniello is a commercial and film director who creates commercials and short films. His work formats also include music videos for indie and rock bands, including The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Kings Of Leon. However, his most recent short film, uploaded via Vimeo just four days ago, is his most remarkable work to date.
Anthony Cerniello’s official website: www.anthonycerniello.com