Seajon. 16mm Ektachrome, 2006

A psychedelic film from the midwest.

Seajon is a film that I made with Alexander Stewart. The following text is taken from his description of the making of this film:

"We had recently been at a party where we were informed by our friend Andy Roche that "everyone knows that the only real film is psychedelic film from Iowa." Andy is a filmmaker whose documentary Born to Live Life is the greatest, and perhaps only, psychedelic film from/about Iowa ever made. Peter and I took this as a challenge to create a psychedelic film that, while not from Iowa, would at least be from the midwest.
Not knowing exactly what a psychedelic film from the midwest might look like, we started with a shared interest in stop-motion animation, and a desire to re-create the hologram effects used by George Lucas in the first Star Wars movie. We locked ourselves in our apartment for a weekend, and hashed out the details. We used a combination of video and double-exposed film to create the holograms, much in the same way that we surmise Lucas did. Just as we were rolling with the project, the news came to us from downstairs that our landlord had just gotten a new baby, a son named Seajon. In what we assumed was a classic psychedelic move, we incorporated this interesting name into our project right away. Seajon? Seajon! SEAJON.

We shot the animation and hologram sequences over the course of the weekend. Inexplicably, we didn't get around to processing the roll of film for several months. When we finally did, what we saw projected onto our humble screen was one of the finest and truest testaments to psychedelia that this midwest has ever seen. We hope you enjoy Seajon a tenth as much as we enjoyed making it.

The original soundtrack to this film was borrowed from a classic educational/self-esteem/bizarro film called "Magic Hands." Unfortunatley, we were not able to transfer the soundtrack from the 16mm film strip. In lieu of that piece, I have inserted a portion of UNKLE's "Celestial Annihilation," which I think conveys the combination of bangin grooves and impending doom that Seajon represents."

Also online at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj3tCca7Z7U