The cat is dead.
 
Do you perhaps think to be able to sit yourself in front of a mirror and tell: “welcome, Mr. Self-distruction?”. No, you can’t. We are Mr Self-destruction. But we remain standing in silence.
It won’t be a spiteful bullet, the naïve opium or the romantic streets of the alcohol to kill ourselves.
Be honest! We are red fishes in their small ball, Buttgereit knew about it. We will die in the most self-destructive way that we can: doing nothing. Nothing that belongs to us. Burning down ourself till we are only a white hole of a worn down picture. Nothing more.
 
“Wearing me out (All this) Hanging around (It just starts) Getting me down”: it’s Gotye in his art-pop-rock song ‘Easy Way Out’, 4th single of ‘Making Mirrors’, that comes to life in Wolly’s apathetic circle thanks to Darcy Prendergast and his australian crew Oh Yeah Wow with the help of vis FX wizard, Andrew Goldsmith.
 
Wally told in few more than two minutes was ironically born after 9 months of pregnancy, it’s life, after all…and only to create the five-room set it took 5 months, where was set also the crew headquarters: the fridge was their actual studio fridge painted grey and the bathroom was built by themself without knowing how.
Almost living in the set. Yes, that is out of business-rules.
 
“Nothing should be combined in a computer” was the golden rule by Darcy.
Even if Andrew, few times, has had to break the rule to correct shades and other effects, Darcy’s will commit to don’t use CG ( “CG sux” was written on the train near to a stecil of Martin Shees) creates something of vivid vintage with a truly modern view.
Shooting with Canon 5D mk II with Sigma 24mm 1.4 to get a wide-enough angle to see Wally’s whole body in frame, slowing down Wally’s movements to reach a surreal, goofy, but not less drammatic sense, Darcy mixes the live-action (played back at 25% speed) with stop-motion claymation, with rotoscoping and a few chroma keying.
 
The black cat claymation is a sort of unpredictable element of fracture. It’s seems to be the only one that, with his naïve gaze, finds out the folly of daily routine.
 

A dreadful routine: Wally starts to lose himself, an erratic zombie who wander from room to room, till he finds to overlap himself with others routine/Wally. A lot of Wallys. But Wally no more. An effect that Darcy obtains setting up a motion control rig and doing multiple takes with the different versions of Wally.
 
And when you see the cat, that is the light out of the box, agonizing in the fire, you know at least that the less bitter way is to vanish in a white nothing.
 
Long live the Cat.