Psychedelic vs Slit-Scan
サイケデリック / スリットスキャン
Psychedelic comes from Counterculture and Slit-Scan from Film Technology. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Psychedelic
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Melts contour and color until reality itself starts to sway.
Slit-Scan
Long exposure through a slit while the camera or the subject moves, stretching space and time into a single image. The Stargate sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey wrote it into film history.
| Psychedelic | Slit-Scan | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1960s–1970s | 1968– |
| Family | Counterculture | Film Technology |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Swirling curves / Complementary colors / Melting letters / Kaleidoscope patterns | Streaked light / Endless planes / Time turned into space / Machine-controlled exposure |
| Best used for | Deepening immersion in music and experience · Festivity that escapes the everyday | Building the subjectivity of space travel or high speed from photographed light · Title sequences that need the sense of an endless tunnel in seconds |
| Type | Lettering that warps like liquid | Cut letters as apertures and stretch them along the streaks |
| Composition | Radiate from the center; fill the margins | Vanishing point at center, wrapped on all sides by symmetrical planes |
| Material | Saturated color, waves, repeating pattern | Strong light on black, with exposure time setting color and density |
| Caution | Hostile to long text and critical controls. Reserve places for the eye to rest. | Adding the streak in post with no continuity of exposure behind it, so the bands slide independently of the motion they should describe. |