Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Dan Deacon, When I Was Done Dying.



Animators are loving this to bits.

From the comments:



At a party a very long time ago when I was in my early twenties and still eager to get out to see and be seen at one point I was deeply engaged with a group of people there describing to them a recent dream. The little group was interested in hearing it, interested in analyzing, having fun with me talking about something weird. Approaching from behind, from out of nowhere, and with zero interest in such things so unreal as dreams my date broke in saying, "Then an egg fell out of the sky and hit the ground right in front of you." And I said, "You bitch." When I heard this song I thought, well, that's a bit of overproduced noise. But it grew on me. The lyrics look like a dream and so do these video segments. It's the sort of thing that appeals to me. Animators agree. It's new. Everyone on YouTube and elsewhere are nice about this. With the words right there in front of me open in another window, I kept up with the song signing it with my own hands in ASL, and not just mental impulses, it's a good lot of visual imagery just the sort of thing I look for, then it becomes so disjointed so ridiculous and so long and dragged out that I realize there would be no reason whatsoever to be communicating this to anybody and I lose patience with it. It's meaningless. It's too much physical effort to convey nonsense that nobody cares about and I'm all, then what next? -- An egg come flying out of the sky and hit the ground right in front of me. You bitch.

It's mental.

4 comments:

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

I really liked the black and white animation at the beginning.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The song and the animation are perfect together. Hypnotic and at least partially under the influence of mind altering substances.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

(1) Can't watch that now but I will later on. Thank you.

(2) Also enjoyed the anecdote.

(3) Last night's rerun of The Big Bang Theory was the one where we learn that Howard and Amy are Neil Diamond fans.

Camp. Or maybe kitsch. Or maybe cornball. I'm not quite sure.

Anyway, the guy who plays Howard was hamming it up big-time while singing Neil Diamond songs and I thought that was really funny because it was so over-the-top and I credited the actor guy for taking the risk and being so funny.

And then, this morning, it occurred to me: What if Neil Diamond really is that hokie?

Seems plausible.

Chip Ahoy said...

Now I've watched it some 8 times forward and backward.

I can see the distinct stitching and I am mightily impressed with editing.

The task: take this segment and animate it.

Task 2: knit that together.

It starts as a blue dot, the instrumental portions represented purely free-form. With the first black and white there are some three or for frames for every note. The visual pattern is forming much faster than the music.

The segments with lyrics are depicted graphically.

The whole thing is run in reverse speeded up and ends in a blue dot, suggesting a beginning and an ending along the lines of a big bang, but on an individual level, describing the personal experience of existence cosmically.