Music video,
4:38 minutes,
English,
NS,
2008
Synopsis
Watchmaker is a feast for the eyes and ears, mesmerizing and hypnotizing the viewer on a visual roller-coaster ride for the senses.
Set to the energetic and dynamic music of The Tom Fun Orchestra, the film is a layered collage of hand drawn, painted, scratched and exposed images.
Creative team
Writer: Tom Fun Orchestra
Director: Christopher Ball
Producer: Christopher Ball, Megan Wennberg, Aram Kouyoumdjian
Personal statement
Director Christopher Ball says:
"Many years ago in grade school I saw my first Norman McLaren scratch animation, called Hen Hop
. He was a pioneer in the art of handmade cinema, also known as camera-less or scratch animation, where the filmmaker draws, scratches or paints directly on the film.
Over the years, McLaren’s technique percolated in my mind and eventually morphed into a concept for a project that utilizes the techniques of handmade cinema, but also uses live action, rotoscoping and visual layering to create a collage set to music.
The concept was to utilize live action footage as a base image, overexposing it to create white space on screen where the animation can be drawn in afterwards. The filmed images would also be hand coloured, traced, scratched or blocked out to create layers of imagery.
The goal of the project was to create a “visual roller-coaster ride for the senses”. In three minutes and forty seven seconds the viewer is assaulted with layers of colour, movement and sound, faster than they can possibly take it all in.
The images are alternately synchronized or intentionally thrown out of sync with the music, and each layer of image is following something different on the music track.
Hopefully for everyone who sees it, Watchmaker
will be the visual roller-coaster ride that it was designed to be, especially on a big screen!"