AACTA Spotlight Featuring PHENOMENA

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Featured image credit: Josef Gatti

We chat to Josef Gatti about PHENOMENA.

What inspired you to create PHENOMENA?

The inspiration for this project came from two things close to me; the natural world around me, and my dad who is a physics teacher. With his help I began experimenting with science and capturing it. Together we created a trilogy of short films featuring cutting edge visuals which screened at film and music festivals, and eventually evolved into PHENOMENA.

This simple experimentation in filmmaking soon developed into a project of epic proportions; an abstract visualization of natural phenomena that reveal the nature of the universe. With a unique visual aesthetic propelled by a powerful score, the project’s greatest influences are 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), SAMSARA (2011), and both COSMOS (1980, 2014) series. At first I went looking for films like the one I had visualized in my mind, and to my surprise I could not find much out there like it. So I decided to make it myself.

 

Image Credit: Josef Gatti

What challenges did you face in creating this production?

There were many challenges producing a project like this during 2020 in Melbourne. Being in isolation due to COVID restrictions during the research and experimenting phase was extremely challenging. We were unable to lean on our usual creative collaborators, Josef's dad, and access facilities interstate. Not being able to travel into nature to seek inspiration added further to the difficulty. But our main challenges were creative and science based, with each episode requiring a lot of experimenting to find the right visuals to tell our story.

BTS - Image Credit: Josef Gatti

What are you hoping audiences will take away from watching this film?

Through Phenomena I hope that audiences are able to experience the world around them from a new perspective and see the extraordinary in the ordinary. The most astounding fact about Phenomena is that all visuals are recorded by camera, through practical experiments. Although your eyes may tell you otherwise, there is no CGI in this film. The incredible visuals and patterns in Phenomena represent the most elemental aspects of our universe, and are all created by interactions of matter and energy. These images give us a peak behind the curtain, and reveal the universe in its fundamental components.

Edited to an electro-cinematic score by Kim Moyes of The Presets, the subject matter is presented with excitement and wonder. While it is my intention for the audience to learn a bit about nature, at the same time it is supposed to be fun and exciting. And through this experience I encourage the audience to reflect on their place within the universe, and to think of us not as separate from nature, but rather part of it.

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