2022
True Colors
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“When I started, I had this vibration in my head that I thought went well with some of the violins that you hear in the Doctor Who theme song. I originally wanted to have the sound slow down before the bass kicked in as if you were slowing a record to a stop on a record player. I’m pretty sure Seth was the one who suggested the idea of some sort of TV cut out sound effect. I thought the scream was a decent bit to add before the evil face showed up. The laugh was from the Clint Eastwood music video (the song is by Gorillaz).”
— Ravin Williams
“When starting our idea for this experimental project, Ravin came up with an interesting idea of using facial features, and from there my editing took off. I have always had an issue with reading people and understanding facial expressions. I took that to a more escalated approach, Googling human, animated, and drawn facial expressions, as well as symbols.
Symbols fostered the idea that facial features could go beyond emotion by expressing thoughts, ideals, and demographics. The format of the video is better watched on a phone, creating interpretations of what technology means to communication and facial/personal recognition. I was inspired to make the entire video feel like an old television when recollecting an old, abstract art piece I saw in a cultural arts museum. The abstract piece that I saw had hundreds of old, broken televisions stacked one on the other, each showing faces and images of culture.
I feel like the television attribute to our film gave the clip an overall feeling of genuine life-likeness. It seems haunting, yet for some reason, recollectable; like you can almost put your finger on it. The horror-filled ending takes on many different meanings, although it is up to the viewer as to which to adopt. For me, it was that people could eternally hide their ill-intentions, that there’s a terrifying nature to people’s ambiguousness, and the confusion in endless misinterpretation. It seemed fitting that misinterpretation would best be shown through an experimental project.
For once I wanted other people to feel some sort of way about not being able to see clearly the expression that stood before them; that they would not find one emotion or one simple answer. In the end, I wanted to experiment with the full capabilities of my DaVinci Resolve editing skills by literally dripping glitch onto the digital image, kind of like pouring acid on a photograph. There are many other artist motives jammed into this minute-long clip, but it is up to the viewer to find them, and most importantly, feel them.”
— Seth Petero
