A film by Stephen Irwin
Music by Sorenious Bonk

A series of flipbooks tell the sad story of the Black Dog.

The sad story of the Black Dog is told with a series of flipbooks. The scene grows denser as looped scenes accumulate and the narrative develops.

The Black Dog, unwanted by his owner, is thrown out into an unwelcoming neighbourhood. On his journey he’s corrupted by acts of violence and grows determined to live happily ever after back home. Unfortunately Mother has different plans and his story ends in tragedy.
The film is told within a single shot using a series of flipbook animations. The scene grows denser as looped scenes accumulate and the narrative develops.

Over fifty flipbook animations were assembled in After Effects within a single shot. Each flipbook represents a different scene, or part of a scene, and continues to play on a loop as each new stage is revealed and the narrative develops.

The flipbooks were constructed using hand-drawn scanned images (assembled in Photoshop), and range from ten to seventy frames in length depending on the complexity of the scene.

Violins, double bass, trumpets, percussion, a mandolin and the sinister sounding strings of a 100-year-old autoharp where used to construct the score. The production was kept messy and rough with minimal mixing and tracking in order to complement the visual style.

Sorenious Bonk is a Danish multi-instrumentalist, currently residing in London. He is a founding member of 6 Day Riot, a London based alternative pop band and has spent much of the last 8 years as a musician, motion graphic designer, vfx supervisor, director and editor. The theme for The Black Dog’s Progress is his first short film score.

I'm currently well into production on The Black Dog's Progress. I've been building upon the animatic since December, replacing each scene with pieces of rough animation. The next stage is to turn each of these rough animations into flipbooks and reassemble them all within the main composition. Composer Soren Bonke is currently reworking the first version of the score using the latest rough cut as a guide.

Stephen Irwin