Animation of a more contemporary kind (do you detect a theme?), Metachaos is a frenetic 8-minute apocalypse by Alessandro Bavari whose Photoshop collages I recall being impressed by some years ago. His video uses computer rendering but with a lot more grit than the usual CGI. The soundtrack is the kind of quasi-Industrial thing you’d expect for the imagery but you can always mute the sound and play something else. Thanks to Paul at Dressing the Air for the tip!
Superb. Thanks again John. I’m a complete animation junkie so I’m loving this “theme”.
Work like this forces me to rethink my attitude towards CGI. I had come to the conclusion that there was some fundamental flaw in the technology. How else to explain the astonishing fact that a crew of 300 with a budget of 150 million dollars can produce something as bland and forgettable as JOHN CARTER?
Imagination is priceless. It can be subsidized but it can’t be bought.
Great stuff! It forces one to re-evaluate his static images. Pity ’bout the muzak.
Absolutely Great !!!!!
One of my favorite things! I’m always making people watch it!
When I’m in charge I’ll redirect some funds. Give this guy Hollywood budgets. Hire the Brothers Quay to make a TV series based on Locus Solus or Impressions of Africa. Will you vote for me?
One thing that sets it apart from run-of-the-mill CGI is the fact that it does not dwell long enough on the nightmarish images and metamorphoses for the viewer to fully make it out – you’re almost imagining them.
Really amazing style
John,
I occasionally come by to your website, just to see what you are posting here. While all of it is quite marvelous, this is particularly good.
A decade or three ago, while something of a recluse, I happened to be at the LA Science Fiction and Fantasy Society clubhouse at a big shindig of theirs, and one of those who were there happened to be an unknown fellow by the name of Robert Bloch. (I suppose that I subsist on an irony rich diet).
While I had wanted to speak with him about his recollections of HP Lovecraft, it seems that he wanted instead to speak about the inadequacies of most film makers trying to depict the visions of HPL. His point was that most endeavors in filmmaking tried to depict the thing in detail, (that prize turkey, The Crawling Eye comes immediately to mind). Bloch instead suggested that the essence of horror in film comes from brief glimpses of the horror.
Bloch suggested, as a thought experiment, that if one were going to make a movie of The Shadow over Innsmouth, for example, the principle way of doing so would be to have the protagonist being chased at the end, with an expression of unutterable horror on his face all the while, but to provide only the barest of glimpses of the shoggoth pursuing him.
I think this film, with its rapid transitions and brief glimpses of horror, captures that principle beautifully.
Thanks, as ever
-Bernard Brandt