Monstrous Media!

The premise of this film will revolve around a very loose story-line which follows one main character on a romp through a non-sensical, visually overloaded, psychedelic clusterfuck. The first half of the video begins in a fruitful, stable wonderland and shows the piece by piece destruction/dismantling of the universe completed at the hands of said protagonist. At the climax, the world has been rendered a desolate, destroyed, baron, grey, wasteland due to the actions of the protagonist. At this point, the main character is struck with a visceral realization that the world stripped of everything is no good, presented as a bombardment of color and psychedelia. He proceeds to build and plant and re-implement color and chaos to return the world back to it’s original state but is quickly overwhelmed by a rapid acceleration in his restoration results. In the end he is smothered by to much stimuli.

The idea is to represent the necessity of balance. Simply, the destruction/removal of things is the negative and replacement/addition of things is the positive. When the negative/dark is over emphasized the world becomes hollow and when the positive/light is restored it is overshot and smothers, thus outlining the importance of the balance between the two.

SO, with all that being said, the visuals:

This was an attempt at capturing what the universe would be like in the beginning of the video when things are still balanced… kinda creepy but with accents of bright whacko colors. The scale of things in this world is also outta whack (beetle to human ratio).
This short running loop is our main character attempting to eliminate a rhinoceros beetle with a magnifying glass. For this particular shot I imagine the beetle being zapped quite quickly and turning into a puff of smoke. The the main character would turn to his next target in a fast-paced fashion leaving little time for the viewer to process what had just happened and allowing for a rapid change in environment. Think; pulling pins out of machinery, knocking stars out of the sky, black paint on colorful flowers, stopping the movement of windmills… frying beetles with magnifying glasses. Any negative action could work here.

Here are some reference images I thought were cool conceptually for what the world would look like once everything is removed. They’re not my drawings but I quite like the rigid, dark, obsolete style used.

And this is what the epiphany will look like. It is the climax, the realization that when everything is eliminated, the world is no good. It is the urgency to recreate what had been removed (sorry i forgot to tack music with the upload).

I want to render this entire video in stereoscopic 3D. Like, 3D glasses 3D. I have been doing preliminary testing with the above footage and the results are mesmerizing. The amount of added depth you can get with this technique is outta this world and I’ve been trying to experiment with it for a while now.

The sorta issue with making such films is that they are impossible to fully test without a functioning stereoscopic projector and a set of glasses. This makes testing shots a pain in the ass but I have a ghetto work-around. Essentially, you render the two stereo angles on a small scale and place them side by side. You look at them from a little distance and cross your eyes until they overlap and you can see the 3D effect. I know it’s whack but it works and will allow me to test my shots until I can get into an actual screening room. Below are some stereo stills you can try it out on. It takes a sec to get used to but it works and it’s worth it.

The other inherent problem with creating 3D films on an independent level is that venues at which you can showcase such works are limited. Fortunately for us the only independent theatre/gallery with a stereo projector in the western hemisphere is in NW Portland… and I’m buddy buddy with the VP. I’ve already sent out an email asking permission to screen there. I’m sure they’ll let us because I know they’re hungry for content.

So yeah. Let me know what you think. I am more than open to comments/suggestions/criticisms/ideas/questions so fire away. I’d love to elaborate on the concept more or explain stereo techniques further but I think we’ve gotten a bit wordy here as it is.

Andrew