Moonage Daydream

Moonage Daydream

a Film by Brett Morgan starring David Bowie

Moonage Daydream a groundbreaking music documentary featured several of our visual art by pieces created for the film. The film was written, directed, edited and produced by Brett Morgen. The film was co-produced by Andrew Murray.  Brett Morgen as a filmmaker is known for his works “On The Ropes,”
“Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck,” and “Crossfire Hurricane”.
 
Xitelab’s Vello Virkhaus worked as both an animator and animation director to help create immersive, era inspired visual art pieces for the film.  We were very honored to have had the chance to pay a small visual tribute to David Bowie in this fantastic film.  Some of the first experimental processing works are featured in the trailer linked here which now has over 2 million views. The visuals that made the cut came from a powerful and spirited collaboration with Director Brett Morgan exploring themes around leaving reality, timelessness and transitioning. The works created took deep inspiration from the concept of time and signal decay to transcendence.
 
During the creative process our team was given access to rare footage selects of live Bowie performances from filmmaker Pennebaker. These film clips from the Bowie Estate were scanned back to digital files.  Our job was to Re imagine the original 35mm films and create visual art that captured the energy and vibe of Bowie in a period vibe appropriate to era, yet contemporary in style. 
 
 
“An audiovisual treat for Bowie fans, Moonage Daydream takes an appropriately distinctive approach to one of modern music’s most mercurial artists.[11]
Moonage Daydream:” a cinematic odyssey exploring David Bowie’s creative, spiritual, and musical journey. From the visionary mind of Brett Morgan, “Moonage Daydream” features captivating, never before seen footage and performances spanning Bowie’s illustrious 54-year long career. The film includes 40 exclusively remastered Bowie songs and is the first film ever sanctioned by the Bowie estate with total access to the artist’s archives.
 
Credits

Vello Virkhaus, Creative Director, Analog Video Art
Greg Russell, Creative Director
Kevin Aguirre, 3D Animator
Brian Egan, 3D Animator
Bobbie Bunn, Graphics Assistant
Jade Davis, Office Management
Video Processing by Tachyons+, Touch Designer, Resolume and Epic mk4 HD custom mod by VSL.

Moonage Daydream

Official Teaser Trailer

Moonage Daydream

RGB Scanlines and color process analog video effects fragmenting Bowie into visual sound waves. Representative of time and signal flow into the ether, drifting apart yet coming from Bowie. Utilizing analog and digital video processing by Tachyons+ Resolume and Touch Designer we created a series of unique visual treatments for the film. These segments were then layered together by Brett in editorial and eventually landed in a few segments of the film.

The visual art was designed to capture the sheer electric intensity of Bowie. Taking some inspiration from the idea of the universal astral data construct, ie: matrix. This concept helps us to illustrate that all reality is temporary and transcendent. Time is moving so quickly as we keep swimming in the deep end to stay someplace, inspired were wild and unusual combinations happen. This process and who Bowie was helped inspire these image processing's and outcomes.