I'm An Electric Lampshade
Client
Wild Combination with Holy Moly Productions
Role
Projection Engineer, Projectionist, VFX, Creative
Team
Jason Batcheller, Jacob Krupnick, Soren Nielsen, Taylor Antisdel
Year
2021-05
Tags
VFX, Content, Post Production, Projection Design, Film
Tools
Projectors, After Effects, MadMapper, Isadora, Premiere
Starting in 2016, the production company, Wild Combination (of Girl Walk fame), started to produce a feature documentary film directed by John Clayton Doyle that would take 5 years to complete. Shooting in the United States, the Philippines, and Mexico, the film would feature the story of Doug, a mild-mannered accountant who retires to focus on his dream to become a pop-start and dancer.
Working with Voguers and professional music producers and stylists, Doug crafts his look and feel and begins performing some amazing concerts. Drawing from the Talking Heads and Depeche Mode, the documentary is a wild ride. To support the wild visuals from the concerts, and to emphasize the dreamy like evolution Doug goes through, we built a projection room and plates with transparent projection surfaces to make some trippy content.
Between 2017 and 2020, and working with Jason Batcheller, we had a few studio sessions that made it into the final cut of the film. We built a quick chase sequencer in Isadora that allowed us to play with blending modes in-real-life. Having literally layered projection allowed that to work in interesting ways! We also did the old analog projector-and-camera echo effect but threw some additional colorizing and noise filters into the mix (and custom delays and offsets) to create some dynamic viz. All the layering effects are done in camera! Very fun stuff to look at. In addition, in 2021, I created the Wild Combination bumper for the beginning of the film.
I absolutely love working with this team (Jacob, Soren, Taylor, Jason, John).
The film hit festivals in 2021 and has had a very positive response! Great soundtrack, too.