adds to the calm atmosphere of the song and helps create the general mood of
the video. As Craig David sings,“my life was never gonna be the same–cause
with the money came another status–that’s when things changed,”things also
start to change in the video. As if on a cue from the word“money,”the image
showing the coins pouring into the cash register from the hand of the bartender
slows down to a freeze frame. Similarly, following the words“when things
changed,”and Craig David pointing to his watch as if to invoke the issue of
time, we see an image of the waitress about to lose her tray with all the drinks,
also slow down and freeze. The loss of the drinks is marked on the sound track
as well, as if someone touched the turntable of a record player for an instant to
make the speed dip. For this instant, both speed and pitch dip, to underscore
“the fall”and the possibility of“losing it,”perhaps also to ironically comment
on the previously-mentioned problem with pitch related to slowing down foot-
age. At this point in the video, the slowing down to freeze spreads throughout
the pub. In the dart game, a thrown dart is frozen in mid-air. At the pool table, a
prospective winner takes a shot at the-ball to pocket it in a corner, but miscal-
culates, so the ball is about to jump off the table when the image is slowed
down to a freeze.
The camera then tours the pub where all life is now frozen. Craig David and
Sting, however, can walk about the room, which is inhabited not merely by
frozen people like in a wax museum, but also frozen acts with objects defying
gravity–coins, a tray of drinks, pool ball and dart still frozen in mid-air. This is
reminiscent of the way Morpheus and Neo, inThe Matrix(Wachowski and
Wachowski), after the surrounding action is frozen, walk about the simu-
lacrum of a world that just a moment ago seemed real, discussing the matrix as
a system. When walking about his similarly frozen world, Craig David adjusts
the black pool ball to a position just above the corner pocket. One by one, the
petrified people and things start moving again as Craig David and Sting leave
the pub: the coins fall where they should, the dart hits its target, the adjusted
black ball hits the corner pocket to enthusiastic cheers, the fall of the drinks con-
tinues onto the floor.
Thus, like inStreet Spiritand inHere Is Gone, hybrid temporality, as well
as slow motion and variable speed are at stake. However, the hybrid tempora-
lity inStreet SpiritandHere is Gone, where bodies move at different speeds
in the same frame, is rather different from the execution inThe Rise and Fall,
where action around the key characters is frozen. An aesthetic reminiscent of
the one inThe Rise and Fallis found in Michel Gondry’s video for The Rolling
Stones’version ofLike a Rolling Stone(). In Gondry’s video, a combina-
tion of two simultaneously shot photographs is used as a basis for aD model
in which a virtual camera can move. Gondry did not go on to construct a model
for people to walk about in, but merely used a technique of sliding between the
168 Arild Fetveit