A THOUSAND CUTS - 3D ANIMATED SHORT FILM (2020)

Produced / directed / edited by Brandon Allen Bolmer - Music composed and produced by Nicholas Robert Thayer

LIVE String Quartet

Violin - Olaia Oliverri
Violin - Anna Csulky
Viola - Melisa Delgado
Cello - Lucjia Gregov

"A Thousand Cuts" is a piece that sifts in this residue of total void, parading the scapes of a bouldered panorama illuminated by rising sun. Anatomizing the notion of loss, it is about leaning into the emptiness of the moment when your world crumbles, accepting it, and through this becoming transformed. Moments unearth deliberately, a thoughtful unshackling and acceptance mustered from the furrows, juts, edges of the chasm. The human rebuttal to the complexities of nihility are poetically illustrated, tearing into an emotional experience expressed through sound and scenery.

This short film is a collaboration between composer Nicholas Robert Thayer and 3d animator Brandon Bolmer, and is the first film to be released as part of the Three Reflections (kickstarter) project, a trio of film pieces with composers Setareh Nafisi and Thijs de Vlieger, and film makers Sam Asaert and Lex Vesseur.

Unusually for a film like this, the music was composed first, with the animation following, allowing the shape of the music to dictate the visual. The music is written for string quartet and electronics, blurring the boundaries between the analog and the digital, and this interplay is reflected in the approach to the full CGI animation, perfectly capturing the feeling of familiarity with the real world, but with a layer of augmented reality sitting above it.

Production tools: Cinema4d + Octane Render