THE STORM MANUFACTURING CO.

I have a new short-short film that’s screening at the Fantasia International Film Festival this week! It will be shown on Sunday, August 3rd at Cinéma du Musée alongside a bunch of other amazing shorts in the Révolutions tranquilles series. My film is called The Storm Manufacturing Co.. Here’s a bit about it:

It is abundantly clear that in this late capitalist age, reckless industrial production and overconsumption have brought destruction and immense change to the environment. Humanity has granted itself an almost god-like position of power, taking vast resources from the Earth with little regard for the consequences. These results of manufactured climate change have bolstered violent weather events around the world. Even in my hometown, increasingly common squall and tornado events have left neighbourhoods without power for days.

This experimental short film uses printmaking and animation techniques to reflect this devastating yet monotonous reality. An invented fictitious corporation, The Storm Manufacturing Co, illustrates the relationship between industry and the environment with a surreal perspective that contrasts different printmaking techniques. Linocut depicts the Storm Manufacturing Co. factories, where labourers are forced into uncomfortable machinery that produces the storms. At the end of the production pipeline, the gritty and violent storm itself is animated using monotype. The possibility of using these printmaking processes in animation was introduced to me by Beatriz Carvalho, an amazing printmaking animator (see her NFB film here). Her inspiration was essential for bringing this concept to life. Additionally, I would like to thank my friend Charlie Galea McClure for letting me use their carving tools.

When I first used monotype, I was deeply impressed by the rich texture and dark contrast that can be achieved by pressing the paper into black ink. Harsh lines and misty residues could swiftly be created in the same image. With this revelation, monotype became the perfect technique to use for the natural elements of the storm. The film contains two straight ahead monotype animations of rolling clouds and lightning. The imperfections between each frame create an interesting effect, a sense of danger that is implied in the flickering grittiness of the prints. Even the clouds become eerie.

On the other hand, I found that linocut leaned towards rigidity and repetition, excellent for depicting the industrial portions of the film. The labour intensive carving process encouraged the use of weaving loops, allowing me to fill the printed animations with a connected series of moving mechanical parts. The solidity of the ink shapes is also more suitable for the thick metallic machinery in these scenes.

Although the two printmaking methods contrast each other in form, they are united through the same black ink and its imperfections, animating machines and nature while maintaining a unified dark atmosphere. Humanity still comes from nature, no matter how hard we try to shape it. Even once the storm has begun, the Storm Manufacturing Co. factories are still in full production, stuck in the neverending machine.