While collaborating with the insanely mad geniuses at Bot & Dolly in beautiful San Francisco, Munkowitz was tasked to Design Direct a truly unique piece called BOX. The piece was originally supposed to function as a Technology Demo, but munkowitz and the team quickly realized it's visual potential and transformed it into a Design and Performance Piece.
The resulting short film is a one-of-a-kind visual and technological achievement due to the very special combination of talent and gear behind the doors of the B&D facility, and was received throughout the world with unexpected accolades and exposure online and on the festival circuit – all due to the intense amount of love and passion poured into the project.
The Concept
The piece was essentially grounded on the Principles of Stage Magic, invoking five of the basic categorizations of Illusionary. These Categories greatly informed the conceptual and aesthetic foundation and were fused with a graphic design aesthetic heavy in Minimalistic Forms and Illuminated Fractal Geometry.
This direction was then placed into a projection-based Physical Installation, where all the 'magic' was captured live and in-camera, filmed documentary-style with no post effects or treatment to make it feel authentic and real. In essence the immense technology behind the curtain being completely masked from the viewer by the methods used to capture the performance.
The Concept
The Design Approach for the film was to have the Graphics be informed by Black and White Optical Illusion Art as the primary visual catalyst. It made sense that visually, if the piece was to be founded on the Principles of Magic and Illusionary, that the Graphics would also fit into this Theory of Illusion in Design. This aesthetic was applied to all the artwork within the BOX and it's evolution throughout the piece as the Principles are explored, interchanging between shaded Volumetric Graphics and Self-Illuminated Geometry.
Secondly, the Lighting Design and Filming Style was greatly informed by the Film Noir aesthetic of the 40's and 50's, utilizing a Black and White palette and highly stylized, minimal lighting to paint a very theatrical image; as it made sense from a design aesthetic to pay homage to that period for a piece founded on such a timeless art form as magic.
Lastly, the final piece of the puzzle was to score a soundscape that contributed to the psychedelic nature of the design; to essentially build an emotional arc throughout the piece as it transitions from mysterious objects within the Box, through a brightly lit and exposed technology demo, and ultimately culminating as fully realized performance art. A myriad of Analog Synthesizers were used by the master himself Soviet Rouge, which fit perfectly with the Conceptual cues and Visual Palette of the piece.
The Process
The process for making the piece was quite involved, combining conventional graphic design and animation tools with robotics animation, projection mapping, automated cinematography and a grip of other technologies unique to the studio. The task of getting the graphic design to first integrate with the robotic moves within the physical space, and then to maintain its visual fidelity when projected required many iterations, since what looks good on screen doesn't always translate to projected and filmed artwork.
In the end, a fairly sophisticated system was devised to render the designs almost exactly as intended; and the shit-hot 4K projector didn't hurt matters either. For more information, The Creator's Project has a lovely featurette about the project worth checking out.
