COMBO.

Just as we were finishing up our discussion of stop-motion animation, a friend showed this video to me.  I hadn’t told him what were talking about in class, so I was quite surprised that this video took so much of what we were talking about and expanded on it.

There are a massive number of other videos on the web that show large wall paintings being done over time, to create a stop motion effect.  But they tend to be more like documents of the process that led to the final product. This video, a collaboration between the painter BLU and artist/filmmaker David Ellis, was shot with the intention of the process being the product.  Making a stop-motion animation of a wall being painted is one thing, but in this piece, the wall is painted with the intention of being a single frame in a larger animation.  Because it is being done in paint (and there are no paint erasers), the previous frame must be painted over before painting the next image in the sequence, leading to a very cool trail of discoloration behind the moving object.  Clearly, this was meant to be more than a document of a wall painting, as there are numerous camera and angle changes, as well as sound effects, and the “looping” effect that the end alludes to.

Pieces like this ask us to rethink the ways we think about things that are seemingly very basic such as what the medium of the piece is – is it a painting?  Is it an animation?  Why must it be destroyed to be completed?  The way the video “ends” leads us to believe that it might be best presented in a way where it can loop indefinitely, instead of being forced to stop by YouTube, creating even more questions about destruction, rebirth, and continuation.

Check it out here: