ARIA
Aria is a short film created for the 10th year anniversary of, V, the sophomore release from the Toronto cinematic rock band, 5th PROJEKT.
The experimental animated short was initially planned for release on the 5th year anniversary until technical limitations put the ambitious aspirations on hold. Years later, after various technological advances, the short film was completed just as UFO/UAP disclosure began to expand in awareness into the mainstream zeitgeist.
Using a mixed media approach of collaged photography, minimal 3D animation, and 2D rotoscoped animation, the central existential theme of the song revolves around its pivotal refrain, ‘Do we have permission to land?’
Based upon multiple childhood contact experiences of one of the bandmates woven into a single science fiction narrative and set in the end days of armageddon, a storyboard was created planning for the use of simplified scenes of looped rotoscoped animation. Greenscreen footage of the bandmates was then filmed. An algorithm was trained/programmed/tweaked over the period of a week to rotoscope, animate and colour the footage in a distinct psychedelic style created by illustrator, Sködt McNalty. Once the palette, look and feel was established, the footage was algorithmically rotoscoped and rendered in less than a day. The rotoscoped animation was edited into the collaged sets of each scene and post-production effects were applied. The generative animation for the lightship was created using code by linking the sonic frequencies of the song itself to the evolving graphical parameters of the craft’s shape. All of this to tell a multi-dimensional story about contact with higher consciousness.