Psalmody project

Work in development: 3 short films of 2 to 3 minutes each, forming an illustrative and typographic meditation on extracts from the Book of Psalms. This project currently seeks a producer and distributor.

45-second trailer

The films

I. PS139

A short film based on Psalm 139 verses 7-16 (English Standard Version). Music by ERH at freesound.org, used under attribution licence with thanks.

II. PS19

The words of this second film are from Psalm 19 (v1-5, English Standard Version). Music by Frankum at freesound.org, used under attribution licence with thanks.

III. PS23

Animatic in progress for the third film, which features the words of Psalm 23 (v1-6, English Standard Version). Music and sound effects from freesound.org, used under attribution licence with thanks. Please note: contains flashing imagery.

Project synopsis

This is a series of short (2 - 3 minute) films interpreting selected passages from the Book of Psalms, presenting the texts in a motion-graphics style alongside crisp animated imagery which obliquely illuminates them.

Each film employs a similar geometric/ diagrammatic visual style, and features an everyperson protagonist stripped to mechanical bone and muscle. The style arose out of the principal medium used, which is Adobe Animate. The capacity of this digital application to support elegant geometric shapes, and varying recurrences of graphic themes, is a key part of the films’ aesthetic.

This project began some years ago, and I did not set out to illustrate Psalms: rather, several long-standing creative interests naturally clicked into place around them. I am not a theologian: my own religious upbringing, while quite thorough, came almost entirely from school education and other secular sources. In adult life - despite sporadic forays into formal religious observance - for better or worse my outsider perspective remains.

So too, I hope, does my outsider’s voice through these films. There are certain unspoken contemporary expectations as to how scripture may be visually augmented – illustratively in technicolour Bible era costume with lots of rainbows and doves, or photographically with sunrises, cornfields etc. All such overworn tropes risk diminishing what they seek to shed light on.

Inevitably, so do my own interpretations. I hope however that they may be new and different enough to challenge preconceptions and to open up a fertile space for ideas between the sacred and the secular.