The night I shot this video, it had been many years since I'd done more than hurry through Times Square. Like most of the New Yorkers I know, I studiously avoid the whole area—noisy, garish, and clogged with shambling tourists and busking costumed (or barely-costumed) characters.
Currently, I'm collaborating on a piece with my friend Luke Dubois, the first Artist-In-Residence for the Times Square Alliance, and so I've had to spend a lot more time there. We're in process of making something to take over the screens for a Midnight Moment this December, and one source of our footage will be crowd-sourced "scans" of the area—we've enlisted some of his NYU students to march in various formation through the "Crossroads of the World" while filming with their smartphones.
This particular night I got swept up and fascinated by the surrounding madness—I realized that I stood in a truly strange place that I didn't understand. I felt compelled to shoot, although I hadn't planned to.
This video is a short sketch-study of that late night in late August: