The folks over at Everynone just released a new addition to their series of shorts in collaboration with NPR & WNYC’s Radiolab – an evocative interpretation of communication which explores the role that language plays in our perception and understanding of the world: WORDS.
As a “bonus video” to reflect Radiolab’s recent subject matter of the same title, Everynone composed an extremely heartfelt visual array…a menagerie of everyday snapshots reflecting the human condition, presented symbiotically through masterful editing and an empathetic score. Each image runs beautifully into one another creating a warm lyricism that not only pays tribute to the minutia of our daily lives, but weaves together a story that represents our society as a whole, tangential only through our assigned definitions of each part.
Everynone was kind enough to elaborate on their process:
“Our friends at Radiolab were making a show about ‘words’, and they wanted us to make a companion video. Upon hearing that the subject for the show would be ‘words’, we immediately thought of the big books, the dictionary and thesaurus. From there, we decided that we’d make some sort of visualizations of these books. Pretty early on, we knew it’d play quite like a game, you could call it a “game-film”. Starting with “play”, we simultaneously created and connected the dots, back and forth between dictionary and thesaurus.
It took a good week to write the piece out, and about a month to shoot and edit. There were a fair amount of changes along the way, but the entire piece existed, for the most part, on paper. Of course, when working in a realm of “planned non-fiction”, there are surprises everywhere. Every person in the piece is a non-actor. We made lots of phone calls and pulled tons of strangers off the street to get the subjects and actions we wanted.
To keep the whole flow fresh, we played with the detail and branches of the word associations, and the transitions between words became our glue.
It was a new way to approach the filmmaking process, and it made the whole thing fun and exciting. If you listen to Radiolab, you’ll find that sort of curiousity and positive energy is gushing, so it was a breeze for us to play with it.”
Lastly, as you all probably know by now, Radiolab is awesome. Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich (and team) consistently create a beautiful musicality of scientific exploration, unique sound design, and affable storytelling – a program more lucid than most visual media, in my opinion – and their latest presentation doesn’t miss a beat. It’s an exploration into the role that structured language plays into our perception of ourselves and the world around us. Be sure to check out Radiolab’s Words following Everynone’s kickass supplement.
Credits:
Made by Everynone
Directed by Will Hoffman & Daniel Mercadante
Additional Photography: Julius Metoyer
Supervising Producer: Robert Krulwich
Associate Producer: Larry Cohen
Motion Graphics: Jeff Desom
Original Score: Keith Kenniff