Black Magick vol II

Filmmakers Dielamb and Xorzyzt (aka Matt Lambert and Brandon Rosenbluth) have collaborated on a dark and disturbing new short film entitled Black Magick Vol II, which was recently debuted at the Drop Dead film festival in Berlin.

The visuals were inspired by old footage of wiccan and satanic rituals, and by the surreal aesthetics of German Expressionism. The film depicts the transformation of human forms into viscous elements. “We worked together closely with our friend and performance artist Helga Wretman to enact a coming of age ritual which used the body as an alchemical agent for spiritual transformation,” says Brandon.The acting was partly improvised, as was the shoot, in order to achieve a raw and somewhat ominous look and feel. It was shot on a Canon EOS 5D with Dedo lighting and plenty of smoke. Matt Lambert augmented this with a flickery 1920s silent movie finish in post production. “With only a few days to cut and post, we kept this side of things pretty rough and dirty. I used scans of old 8mm film stock and lots of simple blurs, displacements, fractal noise and grain.”

Actors’ faces, spilled liquids and swirling plumes of smoke merge and morph together thanks to a few Sapphire plug-ins, and pixel motion which was used to create the distortions. A similarly dark and spooky soundtrack was created by Jonny Teardrop and the band Reliq.