Artificial Matt
ABOUT
A two-minute sampler of the narrative animation from Aufbruch/Matt, a year-long project that pairs each of Wagner's twelve operas with a scored walk through New York. Wagner himself is the recurring lead. He steps off the subway at 59th Street, walks Central Park and Bryant Park in the rain, sits down for imagined interviews, conducts, argues on Zurich's quays, and stands among the gods and Valkyries he wrote. Around him: the Dutchman's storm at sea, card games, harbour markets, and title sequences for the operas he planned but never wrote, Die Sieger and Sâvitri among them. Every character, set and performance was designed and directed individually, then built into short scenes for the project's films, essays and imagined interviews.
SELECTED FRAMES — 8 OF 8
PROCESS
Every scene started from the writing, not the image. Each month of Aufbruch/Matt produced a walk, a set of essays and imagined interviews with Wagner, and the animation was made to serve those pieces. The script came first, then a still for each beat, then motion. Wagner had to stay recognizably the same man across the subway platform, Central Park, a recording booth, a Valkyrie's rock and a candlelit card table, so I locked his face, coat and silhouette early and rejected any frame where he drifted. That cost more frames than anything else. Stills were animated in Runway and Seedance, usually as single continuous shots with one slow, deliberate camera move. Adding a second move tended to warp faces and costume detail. Everything was graded toward one palette: tungsten, candlelight and wet stone, so a 19th-century salon and a 2026 street at night read as the same world. The bright daylight shots were kept only where a walk needed them.
Credits
More Film Work
The Mission is Not Finished
Mark Gaffney
She Asked Me to Dance 🩸 | EP. 7 — THEY CAME FOR HIM
PeaceLeFlyTheAlien
She Asked Me to Dance EP. 6 — BACK TO WORK
PeaceLeFlyTheAlien