Set in a hinterland between the civilised world and the wilderness, TOM tells the story of one man’s journey to rediscover who he really is.
TOM is a dance for camera installation created by award-winning choreographer and film-maker, Wilkie Branson. In this new work, Wilkie explores storytelling using the hip hop language of b-boying, bringing it together with cutting-edge technologies including animation, projection mapping and surround sound.
TOM has been hand-crafted by Wilkie and transformed into a digitally animated screen dance work. As a live installation, TOM’s world is projected across 3 layers of pepperscrim gauze, creating a uniquely layered screen world that brings depth of field to the viewer, alongside playing with negative space in between the layers of TOM’s world.
Scroll down for more info on how Wilkie has created this project.
TOM has been animated using a process called photogrammetry. Wilkie has spent painstaking months labouring and self-teaching to produce intricately detailed scale models of scenery and objects. He has then photographically scanned the models for photogrammetry, and digitised the models to create realistic 3D scenes enhanced with digital VFX.
Wilkie has filmed himself dancing and moving dozens of times over against a green screen, layering these images with a hand-sketch effect to appear drawn into the animated landscape.
These multiple Wilkie’s appear throughout the film, and shadow TOM as he moves through his everyday life, and what seems first small and insignificant grows to an ever-greater presence within the film.
Wilkie Branson is an interdisciplinary dance artist and film maker. Self-taught in both dance and film, which form the main focus of his work, the roots of his practice lie in B-boying. Branson’s dance style has developed into a unique fusion, with expression, accessibility and integrity at its heart. He received the Arts Foundation Choreographic Fellowship in 2012 and was most recently the recipient of several awards for his dance animation, Little Dreams. Branson has toured works both nationally in the UK and internationally in Europe and North America as a choreographer, movement director and film maker.
Branson is a New Wave Associate at Sadler's Wells and a Playtime Artist at Pavilion Dance South West.