Light Motif

Light Motif is a refreshing experimental short film by French artist Frédéric Bonpapa that offers a visual music exploration, a transposition of a musical composition into visual form which seeks to stimulate the senses and the subconscious of the viewer.

The film follows the tradition of those experimental shorts that give prominence to music over the image. That is, instead of the usual audiovisual contract in which sound is subordinate to the image, the soundtrack is the one that manifests through or dictates the visuals.

Frédéric Bonpapa has brought tools from CG animation to the synaesthetic film experience, taking great advantage of the resources they offer for creating shifting intensities, colors, rhythm, textures, repetition, variation, procedural generation of shapes and motion, etc.

Considering many visual music films use a purely abstract aesthetic, it’s interesting to note some of the director’s choices, including the staging that takes place in a modern interior space, the combination of photorealistic and abstract aesthetics, the use of a monkey character (which makes the film more accessible to the audience) and the way the short plays with subjectivity (which is possible thanks to the existence of a character). The great attention to composition, framing and aesthetics are also worth highlighting.

Frédéric Bonpapa created Light Motif after 12 years of working in animation and VFX, and his experience in the medium shows through in the impressive quality of the production. Bonpapa received his Master’s degree from Université Paris 8, Light Motif is his debut as director.

The music that inspired the film is “18 Musicians – Section II”, by American composer Steve Reich.