Most movies run somewhere between 1 ½ to 2 hours long. And most often, their concepts and content are sold to us in trailers that are 1 ½ to 2 minutes long. Let's say you made a movie that's projected running time is estimated to be 720 hours how could you possibly be expected to boil down the details of your opus in so few minutes? This may well have been the thought process behind the trailer above, which clocks in at 1 hour and 12 minutes. For a trailer.
The Film Stage tipped us to the trailer for Ambience, an experimental film that is the brainchild of Anders Weberg. The Swedish artist claims to be a very prolific director, reporting on the trailer's Vimeo page that he has made 300 films. However, he will bring his career as a moviemaker to a close with his 30-day long Ambience.
Weberg has grandiose plans for Ambience's debut. The groundbreaking filmmaker is looking to premiere it on December 31, 2020, reaching into the new year of 2021 by nearly a full month. Rather than one big premiere venue, Weberg intends to screen the film simultaneously on every continent. (The details of how or precisely where are at present unknown.) And once the film has run through its record-breaking running time; it will be destroyed.
As an experimental film, Ambience does not boast a typical narrative. Instead, Anders Weberg promises audiences (presumably VERY patient audiences) "a surreal dream-like journey" wherein "space and time is intertwined," while providing "a sort of movie memoir" of Weberg's life.
Though the trailer above is longer than any we've ever heard of, Weberg is calling it a "teaser." According to his proposed marketing strategy, the first "short trailer" will be released in 2016. It will be 7 hours and 20 minutes, so only 8 minutes shorter than the combined running time of Michael Bay's first three Transformers movies. Weberg's "longest trailer" will follow in 2018, and is expected to clock in at 72 hours, or three days long.
In case you haven't given yourself over to this 72-minute teaser for Ambience, know that it will only be available online for a limited time. Weberg plans to take the vid down on July 21st. So watch it while you can. And if you're so inclined, plan your vacation days for the full movie when it hits in 2020-2021.
It's easy to be dismissive of a film project this strange. But in a medium that is largely fueled by commercial appeal, it's kind of magical that someone would spend so much time creating a piece that so defies convention, expectation, and in some respects sanity. Does Weberg actually expect audiences to give over a month of their lives to watching an experimental film? Or is Ambience meant to be an experience that you can walk in and out of, like the fictional 24/7 reality series in the Jim Carrey vehicle The Truman Show? Perhaps we'll find out as Weberg's first full trailer hits in 2016.
