Static After Summer (2019)

Upon returning to Nashville, Tennessee after spending the summer in northern Florida, Eli Hayes, still in the grips of depression, sunk into the isolation of his apartment and continued to close himself off from the world. Nearing a state of agoraphobia, Hayes once again turned to his camera, and the act of capturing images, as a therapeutic means of reengaging with his surroundings. STATIC AFTER SUMMER is a slow landscape film in two parts, examining the textures of nearby environments through gradual expressions of light, color, movement, and sound. The images presented are illustrative of the eye, while the audio presented is illustrative of the mind: somber synths, and periodic noise from the external world attempting to force its way through Hayes' emotional shell via the path of memory. The result is a dissonance between what is seen and what is felt, in an attempt to capture the inharmoniousness of the world's beauty and the pain of unhappiness.