Time itself is the subject, tracked across scales from a single afternoon to the full sweep of human civilization. Ron Fricke shoots the film entirely in time-lapse, using custom-built cameras and rigs of his own design, including one system that pans a full 180 degrees over a 24-hour exposure of open desert. There is no dialogue and no narration; the only actors are light, weather, and crowds moving through frame at accelerated speed. The footage runs from prehistoric ruins through Egypt, Rome, and the cathedrals of medieval and Renaissance Europe into the modern industrial world, with clouds, seasons, and shadows threaded through as smaller units of the same subject. Composer Michael Stearns scores the whole thing as one continuous piece, built partly on an instrument he built himself, a twelve-foot aluminum beam strung with two dozen piano strings called the Beam. Fricke shot in locations on five continents, and the film shares its visual language with Koyaanisqatsi, which he photographed before making this one.