Sam Smith
Permutation Set

Permutation Set was a four-channel video work that expanded a single film moment into a seemingly infinite loop of changing perspectives. The work featured a cast of 32 re-staging a 20-second scene from the 1973 film La Nuit Americaine (Day for Night) by François Truffaut. Each of the eight shots that make up the sequence was reshot eight times from different camera angles, adding up to 16,777,216 possible edits. The colour palette for costumes and props was closed down to allow only neutral tones with minimal red and yellow highlights placing emphasis on the movements of the cast through space, treating them as moving sculptures. The end product was as much a formal exercise in cinematography and editing as anything else.