Present for filming were Mekas, Warhol, Palmer, Gerard Malanga, Marie Desert (Mekas' girlfriend), and Henry Romney (of the Rockefeller Foundation). Cinematography took place overnight on July 24 and 25, 1964. įor a shooting venue, Warhol made arrangements to use an office belonging to the Rockefeller Foundation on the 41st floor of the Time-Life Building at 51st Street and 6th Avenue. The floodlights were essential to Warhol's concept for the film, as there would be almost nothing to see without them.
As the only floodlit skyscraper in New York City, the impact of the lighting was dramatic, with one person calling the tower's illuminated crown "a chandelier suspended in the sky".
In April 1964, the upper 30 floors of the Empire State Building were floodlighted for the first time in connection with the opening of the New York World's Fair in Queens. Around the time Warhol considered the idea, he had completed (in late 1963) his first extended-length film, the 5-hour Sleep, which shows multiple views of a man sleeping Empire was his second long film. He told Mekas that he thought an image of the floodlit building would make a good Warhol film, and Mekas passed the idea to Warhol. Palmer had been sleeping occasionally on the roof of Mekas's Film Maker's Cooperative, which had an impressive view of the tower, only a few blocks away. The initial idea for Empire came from John Palmer, a young filmmaker affiliated with Jonas Mekas.
SILENT INSTALL BUILDER 5. WINDOWS
At three points in the film, the reflections of the crew, including Warhol, are seen in the windows of the Rockefeller Foundation office, where the work was filmed, as the office lights were not shut off before the crew started shooting after changing the film magazines. Eventually, the floodlights go dark and the image in the remainder of the film is nearly total darkness. In the background, a beacon atop the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tower flashes at intervals corresponding to every 15 minutes in real time (it flashes a single time every 15 minutes and at hour it flashes the time of day). Lights in the windows of other structures go on and off. Floodlights on the upper part of the building snap on. As the sun sets further, the building is enveloped in darkness. As the sun sets almost imperceptibly, the figure of the building emerges and its details become clearer. The film begins with a blank white screen, a result of the camera being calibrated for nighttime filming. The film consists of a stationary view of the Empire State Building lasting the entirety of the running time. Empire was filmed at 24 frames per second, and is meant to be seen in slow motion at 16 frames per second, extending its 6 + 1⁄ 2-hour length to 8 hours and 5 minutes.
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