Petrolia (3-Channel Version)

Petrolia takes its name from the redundant oil drilling platform situated in the Cromarty Firth, Scotland. The film looks at the architecture of the oil industry along the Scottish coastline where oil and gas supplies are predicted to run dry in the next forty years.

Shot on 16mm film, using time lapse and long exposure techniques, the film presents an artistic record of industrial phenomena: the toxic beauty of the refinery at Grangemouth, huge drilling platforms gliding across the water as they come in for maintenance and repair at Nigg and the last dance of the shipbuilding cranes in Glasgow harbour.

Benedict Drew composed the film’s soundtrack using purely electronic, computer generated sound that works at the threshold between silence and noise as the image works between the visible and invisible.

This video is a three-channel synchronized composite presented in HD. The single channel version can be found here.

Prod/Dir: Emily Richardson
Camera: Emily Richardson
Sound Composer: Benedict Drew