John Lennon on Peace (Toronto, 1969)
Way back in 1969, the Beatles' John Lennon was interviewed by a 14-year old young man in a Toronto hotel room, on the topic of peace. The audio recording has recently been revived, with professional direction and visuals, creating an incredibly vivid, short documentary.
The YouTube video caption describes how this project came together, and the players involved:
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message.
The results are, simply put, awesome.
Comments (8)
this was nominated for an oscar this past year for best animated short, for those who were unaware.
In fact, you guys already wrote about "I Met The Walrus" back during the Oscars:
http://www.blogto.com/film/2008/01/he_met_the_walrus/
Yeah, I remember the earlier article - although I suppose now that the whole film is now viewable online, it's worth reporting again.
I saw a presentation by the filmmakers at this year's Flash In The Can event (free tix courtesy of BlogTO, natch!) and much to the audience's surprise, they revealed their process to be extremely lo-fi - none or very little digital programs were used. In fact, that segment with the globe was all stop-motion animation, as they painstakingly photographed and animated an actual spinning globe. Super-fantastic work.
(Correction: digital programs WERE used, but to a lesser extent than what people would expect. )
Sure Rick, it was written about. Had you seen it online way back then, though?
Best part is when Canada is represented as "Nothing". I found that kinda harsh on the part of the animators.
Don't you know Ry-Tron? We Canadians are suppose to be self-effacing!
(That part, incidentally, got the biggest laughs when it was screened in Toronto at FITC.)
I'm glad there are interneters who are on top of these things. I don't know if I could withstand seeing the same thing twice. It would be such a waste of my ... oh.
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