"Once upon a time there was a game that nobody ever played, sitting on the floor in the back room of an empty arcade. The game was full of life and strife, mega-monsters and robot fights. We Are The Strange
was the title. Now meet the players who live inside, idle." The story of filmmaker
M dot Strange and his solo indie masterpiece,
We Are The Strange.
When
the trailer hit the web in October of 2006, it was an instant sensation. The video depicted a surreal digital dystopia full of
bizarre characters and an absurdist plot, all set to
rockin' chiptune music.
Soon the eccentric creator of the film, M dot Strange (a.k.a. Michael Belmont), opened up his production process to the web. Through use of
an official blog,
making-of videos, and an extensive
"film skool" series, Belmont gave viewers insight into the innovative animation process he calls
"Str8nime" ("strange plus 8-bit plus anime"). By collating disparate techniques such as CGI, greenscreen, stop-motion, papercraft, and even Mario Paint, he had perfected a
striking,
overstimulating visual style that was not quite like anything seen before.
The premise of the film unfolded, too -- a mute "dollboy" named
eMMM and a cursed woman named
Blue meet, forlorn, in the Forest of Still Life. Together they sojourn into the sinister
Stop-Mo City in search of the perfect ice cream parlor. Meanwhile, the chain-slinging superhero
Rain and his psychotic origami sidekick, Ori, do battle with the monsters inhabiting Stop-Mo in pursuit of their ectoplasmic archnemesis,
Him (based on videogame baddie
Sinistar). But, like the 8-bit games that inspired it, the plot of the film is incoherent and somewhat juvenile -- the focus is on the action and the cinematography.
By the end of the year, Belmont completed the film and even snagged a spot at the
Sundance Midnight Movie Festival, which led to favorable write-ups in
Wired,
Variety, and
the New York Times. (
Not all the buzz was good, however -- several of the Sundance critics reportedly walked out in bewilderment halfway through the film).
His work finished, Belmont payed back the community that supported him by
releasing the movie for free in HD on the web (eager fans
churned out art and translated the movie into
17 languages, including Icelandic, Brazilian Portuguese, and leet). He also put together a
2-disc deluxe edition with scads of bonus features. He still runs
a blog where he chats about filmmaking, animation, and upcoming projects.
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posted by wildcrdj at 9:38 PM on April 9