M dot Strange
M dot Strange's 2007 animated film, 'We are the Strange' caught the attention of the Sundance Film Festival. In a world of his own, M dot Strange is driven to extreme creative animation. What the Sundance Film Festival has recognised, is the lone artist dedicating his life to independant filmmaking. He calls his new genre of animation 'str8nme'.
M dot Strange's world of creative expression is one of hard work. Every night he works until morning, undertaking all parts of the filmmaking process. "I want to create without all of the life support systems that Hollywood has to offer. Being creatively independent is everything in filmmaking! I guess, I'm just a psycho extremist that looks at the world of film and art and says. But what is that doing for the world? For me, there has to be a purpose to filmmaking."
"As an artist you are compelled to confront and challenge the popularise point of view of society. My films carry with them a bigger meaning. Not to entertain, but to show us how the world really is. The world can be a bad place for some people. To make the message palatable, I create an alternate place where everything has been designed to have a specific meaning. Every character, every colour and every movement has been engineered and wrapped in a belief that is personal."
Surrounded by computers, sets and lighting rigs, M dot Strange lives every moment of his life inside his very own movieland. "Its a space where nothing else exists but the creative journey." When the creative process ends, he emerges from his alternate reality to reveal the latests in the world of 'str8nme'.
"For me, the journey towards filmmaking came by accident while I was at college. After watching David Lynch's movie 'Lost Highway', I thought 'Wow you can do that in film. Have something that is totally crazy like that!'"
"With a whole new vision of filmmaking, I started shooting seriously - smashing out 30 - 40 shorts in quick succession. Fully immersed in filmmaking now, I started a public filmmaking group with over 100 members. We would gather each Wednesday night at coffee shop where we would shoot films right there on the street. We would shoot and then cut it the very same night.”
"After moving to LA, I started another creative collective to do a bunch of films there. But I soon found my ideas and the things I wanted to do, were just to weird, or too big. Especially doing live action with no budget! I needed to find a new vehicle that could take my creativity to the next level. For me that was animation. Knowing nothing about the techniques, I read everything I could find on stop motion and claymation. The most accessible form of animation was stop motion."
"I decided it was so much fun that I wanted to do it as a job. I wanted to do this as my career. In my head, I was like… OK, if I want a job in this, I need to do something that other people aren't doing! I need to do something to get people's attention. I need a project that needs to be my portfolio. So I figured my journey was to make an animated feature film by myself. That's how I can show the world that I am this serious filmmaker guy to get my career started. So that's how I started making 'We are the strange'. Now I have finished my latest film which took 4 years, called 'Heart String Marionette'."