In their latest in-house CG study, the design and animation crew at Panoply in London investigate the psychological condition known as derealization, which involves feelings of detachment from one’s self and surroundings.

Mark Lindner, CD at Panoply in London: “The idea for this piece came in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic which isolated and fundamentally changed so many people’s lives forever. The constant cycle of negative news and the strict social distancing measures combined to create a dissociative, mass-malaise.

“This in turn left many feeling disconnected from their everyday lives and the people around them – including members of our own team here at Panoply. This film is a visual exploration of this phenomenon.
 

“As derealization is a subjective experience we wanted to come up with a variety of surreal visual breakdowns of reality whilst connecting them all through a loose narrative path.”

 
“As derealization is a subjective experience we wanted to come up with a variety of surreal visual breakdowns of reality whilst connecting them all through a loose narrative path.

“A constant drifting camera move was used to emphasize the wandering mind of the viewer coupled with a subtle dolly zoom to unsettle their perspective each time the scenes start to break down.

“The rotation of the camera was important as well, as keen viewers will notice that each scene only really begins to fall apart once the composition moves past the horizontal line before resetting upon transition between scenes. This cycle of set scene, visual breakdown/rotation, and transition/reset was used to further emphasize the coming and going wave-like nature of the experience.

“As always, the audio plays an important part in this project. We collaborated with Human Robot Soul to create a soundscape that would distort and warp with visual cues. They also suggested matching the room reverberation of each scene as we transitioned between them to immerse the viewers as much as possible in the experience.”
 

 
Production: Panoply
Director: Panoply

Audio: Human Robot Soul