Demo reels serve as the primary sales tool for studios, but they also act as unintentional time capsules reflecting the tastes and attitudes of the company, their clients, and the audiences they target.

But sometimes demo reels capture more than the summary of a group’s creative output.

As expected, the Imaginary Forces reel from 2000 (below), glimpses younger days of talented people, but it also reads like an unofficial record of a decade’s most visible media culture.

And while the rapid proliferation of studios since 2000 makes it unlikely a single studio will dominate motion design to this degree again, IF’s newest reel (above) demonstrates the striking, innovative nature of their work shows no sign of fading with time.

HENRY V
by William Shakespeare

PROLOGUE
Enter Chorus

Chorus
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your IMAGINARY FORCES work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o’er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

Exit

Production: Imaginary Forces