This was a pretty unique project for a few reasons. For starters, I didn’t film any of the footage. I started with a bunch of footage that Marcio and Matt dropped in my inbox along with a note, “See what you can come up with.” In other words, “You are cordially invited down the rabbit hole.”
I loved the energy in these guys. You can feel how pumped they were for the session, and there are so many iconic challenges. So there was an authenticity there. But the material is different from what I’m used to editing, which is my footage with my own theme and style. With everything filmed on Gopro, there was so much empty space in every shot, and I had no idea what to do with it. I almost didn’t want to take the project on because of that. I was reading a book called The Gifts of Imperfection at the time, which led to me embracing the space as a blank canvas to fill. That’s probably my biggest personal breakthrough from this video and where the madness started.
People assume that the creative process only comes from drugs, and I feel sorry for them. It’s called imagination and coffee. Wait, coffee is a drug—fuck. I don’t even know how to describe where all the wacky imagery comes from. I guess a mash of reflections about how we are all like apes hyper-living through the internet using our primitive brains, man. The video includes some of my dreams of being underwater with sharks, empty voids, and the volcano thing, which goes meta on the whole theme. Some of it goes into pulling back the layers of cyber consciousness to the physicality and the literal bare bones of being human. There is a whole six months of swimming around in my head that is referenced in the video. So, you can go as deep as you want into that.
But fuck all that noise, it’s gotta be watchable. It’s a parkour video at heart, so the animation plays around the movement. It doesn’t obstruct or distract but amplifies. With all the intensity and craziness, it might not fit into everyone’s expectations or comfort zone. But, hey—that’s Simian Fever.
Story by Fraz The Wizard.
Featured Marcio Filipe, and Matt Mccreary.
