Belgium-based director/CD/artist Jean-Paul Frenay talks to Stash about the brooding and ambitious titles he created for the second edition of the OFFF Festival in Quebec with VFX help from the Paris branch of Prodigious.

Jean-Paul Frenay: “Hector contacted me in July on my birthday but I had so much commercial work last year that I only had the chance to produce the film in late February. I actually finalized the movie in 2K at 5 am in the morning just before my presentation.”

“So it was a hell of ride but, in a certain way, I liked the urgency of it. I like pushing my limits. It gives me a certain altered state, a sort of creative trance.

“I had total creative freedom. Actually, nobody knew about what I was planning to do except Hector who received a small treatment just before I started the shooting.

“We actually compacted six days of shooting in thre long days! Editing just after the shooting to be able to give the VFX guys the most days to create the robot shots. I worked with Prodigious CGI in Paris for the VFX and, in parallel, Marcelo Baldin from Combustion worked on the sound design and, thanks to Mute records, on the editing of the 2nd Gen track I used on the piece.

“Doing a trailer for OFFF is a great challenge and represents an even greater opportunity to express yourself freely as an artist. It was really important for me to create a piece I could relate to completely. A sort of statement of the present through the creation of iconic canvases related to the consumption, technology, education, oversharing, sex, religion, etc which would include the speakers names.”

A Bang Bang Club Production
Written and Directed by Jean-Paul Frenay
Executive Producer: Geoffroy Rouffiange
DOP: Francois Starr
Editor: Aaron Fuks
VFX: Prodigious CGI
Music: “Evox” by 2ND GEN (Written by Wajid Yaseen & Alice Kemp)
Sound Design & Mixing: Combustion