The Photo
Date: 1985 Running Time: 15:40
David Daniels spent four years post-producing Buzz Box, a re-lentlessly crafted critique of television's audio-visual assault. Best known for his work on Pee-Wee's Playhouse and on Peter Gabriel's acclaimed music video Big Time, Daniels is one of the world's foremost animators.
Much of the "insanimation" in Buzz Box is achieved through a process Daniels invented called "strata-cut." Using oil pigments and soft plasticine modeling clay blended together at low heat, countless long spaghetti- and taffy-like strips are formed, and then further combined into larger time/space sequences or "motion-sculptures." Some of these "sculptures" resemble contorted blobs of neon and day-glo cinnamon swirls, others look a bit like sushi rolls. Yet when these unique objects are knife-cut sideways along the main axis (lengthwise), the interior "strata" are revealed, and a smooth string of psycho-morphic images emerge. Each segment or sliced level flows naturally into the next and a series of "motion paintings" is formed. 3-D constructions are thus put into the service of 2PD animation, as the potential locked in the sculpture is released into the kinetic energy revealed in the paintings. Over 32,000 separate paintings were made in this manner to be used in this film of fluid motion and jarring abruptness.
Daniels describes the film/ video as a "hyper-hypo-micro-epic-opera of seduction and abuse, unraveling one's threadbare sense of what's real and what's flash-hype in the spit-bucket of Ameri-ca-ca."