About two years ago, a friend told me their idea to shoot 30 seconds a day, every day for a year, as a type of “pulse of NYC” kind of experiment. (he was a commercial editor, so I imagine that’s where he got the 30 seconds, but it seemed like a decent enough length of time)

This year, I’ve decided to give it a shot. Not as a document of New York (especially since I’m so bi-coastal these days), but as a filmmaking exercise. I’ve set up a few self-imposed rules, too, though some of those might be broken as the year goes on.

- Each film is a single, 30-second take. No editing, post-production, extra sound or effects or anything.

- They don’t necessarily have anything to do with me personally, though I am obviously present and chose to film the scene for whatever reason. It’s not a video-blog of what I’m up to, just a capturing of 30 seconds somewhere each day.

- For the start, at least, I’m going to keep the camera locked; no panning or zooming. Find an interesting angle and see how the world enters and leaves the frame.

I’ll post each film the day after it was shot.

A great deal of the 365 films may be dull. A few of them may be funny or amazing. Hopefully about two a month will be a learning exercise. And if I’m lucky, maybe 2 or 3 films will really be stunning. We’ll see.

Also: I post each one daily on my blog, frants.tumblr.com, and plan to post monthly "learnings" from the previous month's films.