Have you ever thought about the literal meaning of the words “motion picture”? I did, and I reached the conclusion that this expression doesn’t fit a contemporary movie very well, because it is too complex and fragmented to be considered a single picture. At the same time I think the name would fit very well something like a gif, which is made of a single or few shots with a simple and immediate meaning.

While cinema has developed some kind of grammar this shorter form of visual art hasn’t been explored yet, even if we can see a growing interest for it, mainly on the Internet. The video you can see above is a good example of experimentation in this field. It is made of a single animated shot and it tries to create an atmosphere with a simple language.

The director Nick Torres built a sci-fi landscape using glowing particles which motion is syncronized to the music. At the same time the whole landscape changes slowly, creating a psychedelic effect which reminds me Pink Floyd’s Astronomy Domine, which was inspired by Sid Barrett’s lysergic trip into deep space.

How is this realized? Well, it’s pretty simple: Torres basically used  the Trapcode Adobe After FX plugin suite, which allows to easily create and manage particle clouds (with a plugin called Particular), synchronize the object’s motion to an audio track, apply glowing and light fx and much more. Pretty simple but really effective.