The life of a mid-level manager can be fraught with frustration, especially if you're type who frequents the suffocating environments seen in animator and digital artist Alan Warburton's VFX short film, Psychometrics. Set in the stale ambience of the modern conference center, the camera zooms through homogenized, computer-generated meeting rooms, and across rows of empty chairs facing projector screens.
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In Warburton's world, instead of Powerpoint presentations, the screens give us statements that tap into our doubts, fears, and anxieties. These are assertions that swing between being placid reassuring, angst-inducing, and instructive: "LIGHTEN UP", "THIS ISN"T HAPPENING," "THERE'S SOMETHING MISSING," "YOU ARE TRAPPED IN THE FUTURE," they proclaim.It's been described as "Existential dread for middle managers," and that sums it up quite nicely: the John Carpenter-esque music by Tom Hatfield drives the camera forward through a series of artificially lit rooms that grow increasingly more surreal, as the stacked chairs and other objects become more elaborate, patterned, and foreboding.Psychometrics was commissioned for the the Outcasting: Fourth Wall Festival in Cardiff, Wales, UK, which runs now through 1st November 2014.
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