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Lights Blister the Desert in an Experimental CGI Short

Inspired by Antivj's projection-mapped miracle, 'The Ark,' director Xavier Chassaing generates an arid 3D dreamscape.
Screencaps and GIFs by author, via

The projection-mapping majesty of visual label Antivj morphs into a jaw-dropping CGI short from experimental filmmaker Xavier Chassaing. The group's newest member, Chassaing began his film as an indepedent artist, on-site at The Ark—the group's experiential projection-mapped maze, conceived in the cactus stalks of the ethnobotanical gardens of Oaxaca, Mexico (Read: [Video Premiere] Antivj Turn Cacti Into Jutting Stalks Of Light). Gripped by the alien beauty of the artificially illuminated succulents against the barren landscape, the filmmaker was spurred into production on his first-ever fully digital project, Dry Lights.

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After absorbing and recording Antivj's site-specific spectacle for a week, the filmmaker set to work on his own explosive—and time-intensive—3D dreamscape. “I literally spent a year and a half alone in a cold desert at night trying to bring billions of cacti to life in an intricate choreography," Chassaing says in the project's press release. "And with 3D rendering, nothing exists on its own, there are no happy accidents. I had to navigate through a lot of painfully disappointing images before getting to what I love about 3D—its endless potential for creation.”

The brunt of these challenges were, nonetheless, self-imposed, as the filmmaker performed all editing, lighting, rendering, compositing, SFX work (and more) singlehandedly, receiving creative collaboration only with the film's dramatic sound design from Thomas Vaquié. This singular focus paid off, culminating in, as the artist describes it, “A world in an erratic state of flux that seems to evade any grasp of clear control plays host to constantly alternating physical and mental landscapes. Moving without a destination in the dead hours of night, mesmerising, intermittent apparitions illuminate their surroundings, allowing personal narratives to breed."

Click here for more projects from Xavier Chassaing, and here for more from Antivj.

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