The Impressive Ice Book
The Ice Book is a miniature theater show, a shadow pop-up book that comes to life in with a touch of flickering magic. Shadows play and lights mesmerize. Armed only with sheets of paper and light, a story of mystery and magic is beautifully told in a shadow-and-light play designed to give a live audience an intimate and immersive experience of film, theatre, dance, mime and animation.
Behind the impressive project is a very dedicated and artistically brilliant duo, Davy and Kristin McGuire. Enamored by old pre-cinematic optical illusions (zeotropes, magic lanterns) and inspired by early 20th century Russian fairytales and German expressionism, they set out to complete this project in four months with a small amount of money. And it’s a tall order: They had to buy an instruction book on how to make pop-ups.
Here’s how they summarized the project:
All we had was a 5D Mark ii, an old Macbook with After Effects, some builders lights and a green cloth that we improvised as a makeshift green-screen. Before we started we had no idea how to make pop-up books let alone how we could combine them with projections. With a lot of care, love and arguing the idea eventually came to life.
Go behind the scenes and see how brilliantly humbling the “film set” is, from the makeshift green screen to the cardboard “stage” to project the light into. Kudos to Kristin who did all of the meticulous paper cutting (from one X-Acto lover to another: It must’ve taken ages!).
I’m certainly humbled by the ingenuity, simplicity and dedication poured into this project. I leave you to be awed by it.