Films in Short Order

For almost a full minute, a rubber tire remains static and stationary, dangling in midair. But as the runway rushes up from underneath, the wheel explodes into life amid a hail of screeching and smoke. The title of the video says it all: “60 Seconds in the Life of Landing Gear.” And on YouTube — which is only a secondary home for the footage — more than 55,000 viewers have watched the full video, which offers footage of a landing gear wheel as the airplane crosses over highways, bridges, grass, and then pavement.It’s a quirky but surprisingly intriguing short film, the brainchild of 33-year-old David Friedman, a professional photographer, amateur filmmaker, and dedicated Web logger who, during the past two and a half years, has uploaded more than 30 such shorts. “I started filming little pieces like this long before I ever started the blog,” Mr. Friedman, who lives on the Upper West Side, said. “It started when I had my point-and-shoot camera, with the ability to shoot only small amounts of video, and then I’d be traveling to photo shoots around the world with time to kill. I’d find myself in an interesting situation or there would be something that caught my eye, so I started recording these moments, even when I had no idea what I was going to do with them. When I started the blog, I had a backlog of short films all ready to go.”That Web log, dubbed Ironic Sans, went live during the early days of 2006, and unlike blogs that focus on a particular subject area or obsess over a specific industry, Mr. Friedman’s trades in the art of the random. One section of Ironic Sans focuses exclusively on how animated works of art depict the sprawling metropolis of Manhattan; another section is about the nature of language, offering users a thesaurus that turns long words into short words, for use in text messages or on Web sites where a limited number of characters are allowed. “I realized there are only so many times that I can tell my wife, ‘Hey, I had a funny idea,’ before she starts rolling here eyes,” Mr. Friedman said, defining Ironic Sans as a place where he could house and catalog all of his random ideas.In the case of his “60 Seconds” film series (ironicsans.com/60_seconds), it has also become the haphazard home for his short films. Mr. Friedman doesn’t intend his work to convey a full narrative, nor does he give the viewer any characters to identify with. Instead, what he seems to be offering visitors is a brief, 60-second dose of contemplation — an abbreviated twist on the feature-length meditations offered by such filmmakers as James Benning (“Ten Skies,” “13 Lakes”).Some of Mr. Friedman’s films redirect our attention to the familiar, training our eyes on such banal objects as dryers at the laundromat or manhole covers shrouded in steam. But several of Mr. Friedman’s later videos do far more than merely record the commonplace. In one work, he shows a minute in the Midtown Apple Store, as told through the feet ascending and descending its spiraling staircase. In another, he captures the tranquility and transcendence of an aquarium, contrasting the beauty of the aquatic life with a foreground of entranced visitors.When he records things as simple as snow falling outside his window, clouds passing by the wings of a plane, or the dancing shadow of tennis player Rafael Nadal, Mr. Friedman doesn’t just underline reality but uses his lens to twist and reshape it, leading viewers to see something common in an entirely new light.“As a photographer, I’m always looking for things, framing shots as I walk around,” he said. “I’ll see a person, or a situation — a laundry machine, a staircase — and I’ll start thinking about how it looks in three dimensions, versus how it would look in two dimensions. Or I’ll be captivated by a motion or by movement, and that’s what intrigues me.”He points to the landing gear video as one of his favorites, and New Yorkers will surely connect with the voyeuristic “60 Seconds in the Life of Tae Kwan Do Class.” From across the street, with a soundtrack of cars honking below and only a partial view of a few students, Mr. Friedman filmed a martial arts class in progress — just the kind of accidental glimpse into the lives of others that makes New York such an unpredictable place to live. Even more emblematic of this city might be the video trained on an escalator in a Midtown subway station, or the one Mr. Friedman shot while riding a Coney Island Ferris wheel.The videos are undeniably simple and straightforward, but for the tens of thousands who have seen the shorts, there is a curiosity and patience to Mr. Friedman’s work that is not commonly found in the quick, loud, and obvious entries so popular on such sites as YouTube. In fact, some of the Ironic Sans videos — like those that focus intimately on such things as shallow puddles, misting humidifiers, and, most recently, the life of a tree — are downright hypnotic. “Flickr coined this term when they introduced a video feature, but I think of these as ‘long photos,'” he said. “Many of these videos have the quality of a still photo with something moving through them, and there’s something very powerful about that effect, of watching something as it moves at the pace of life.”ssnyder@nysun.com

Films in Short Order

More from the New York Sun

Is John F. Kennedy Having a Comeback?

Moody’s Warns on New York City’s Debt

One War Aim Might Require Boots on the Ground

Reckoning Ahead for Democrats Over Soaring Energy Costs

‘Insanity’: White House Blasts CBS News for Hiring Former Liz Cheney Staffer for Prestigious Job

Trump Walks Back Welcome After Iran Says It Won’t Play in U.S.-Hosted World Cup

Trump Administration Plans Jones Act Waivers in Effort To Lower Skyrocketing Fuel Costs

Paranormal Podcast Film ‘Undertone’ Upends the Horror Movie Genre, To Creepy Effect