Mezameru Wakusei – The Awakening Planet – dir. Koichiro Tsujikawa

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Mezameru Wakusei – The Awakening Planet –

Director’s Name: Koichiro Tsujikawa

Producer: Gutevolk

Country of Origin: Japan

Country of Filming: Japan

Language: English, Japanese

Runtime: 4 minutes 12 seconds

Film Description:

This music video was born from a remote collaboration between filmmaker Koichiro Tsujikawa and musician Gutevolk during the COVID-19 pandemic, an “audio-visual exchange diary” shared through social media over a period of several weeks.

Working under the concept of an “audio-visual exchange diary,” Tsujikawa filmed “sketches” of plants and stones that caught his eye during morning strolls, and then sent these sketches to Gutevolk, who put sound to the fragments of stop-motion in reply. Over the course of several weeks, the two artists continued to exchange sketches while uploading a new video to social media each day, making their process visible. This process culminated in the completed video for Gutevolk’s song “Mezameru Wakusei” (“The Awakening Planet”).

Following the diary’s completion, Gutevolk released a series of songs inspired by the work, including “The Number of Blinks,” “An Encouragement of Whistling,” “Fly Me,” “Läpinäkyvä,” “Mizuiro Kodomo,” and “I’m Gonna Be a UFO.”

All scenes in the film were shot in the park near Tsujikawa’s home in Tokyo, and the sound was rendered in Gutevolk’s home studio. In the thick of the pandemic, the artists took motivation from their closed environment, looking to the objects in their surroundings and using them as a source of creation.

Tsujikawa’s rich imagination and meticulous stop-motion brings to life stones, leaves, flowers, and tree branches that move around happily like living creatures, sometimes lovingly, sometimes comically, in vivid color.