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."