Role: Director
Challenges: Produced in under 24 hours, the goal was to procedurally generate a feature length animated film that adhered to the conventions of a traditional 8 reel film story, but without any specific assets, characters or plot. It is the film Piet Mondrian would make were he a director.
Results: The result is a film one step removed from a test tone and pattern that nevertheless contains color blocks representing sequences, scenes, hooks, shots, and music. It is the most minimalistic film I can imagine while covering a feature length running time with all the algorithmic elements of a cinematic story. The hope is that it’s a mesmerizing piece of evolving abstract art.
By permutation of the simplest of initial assets - a single color matte and a 440 hz tone - over the course of its 90 minute run-time, it utilizes no plot or objective storytelling but nevertheless contains all the basic components required to discuss it as a minimalist narrative experience in critical vernacular. This is cinema in its most elemental form, the tools and craft of screenwriting and editing reduced to a mesmerizing abstract composition that evolves through every beat of motion picture syntax “By the Numbers.”