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Phantom Canyon
2006 | 10:00 | 35mm | Black and white
Multiple prize winner screened at more than 50 festivals worldwide
Phantom Canyon is an exploration of memories and a personal reflection on a pivotal journey taken years ago. The film metaphorically circumnavigates this experience and is a surreal meditation on the filmmaker's process of interpretation. Music and sound by Bruce Odland.
“Stacey Steers creates an utterly distinctive style of low-tech animation that is at once antiquated and completely contemporary. Composed entirely from over 4,000 handmade photomontages, her film brings to life images from 19th century science photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Eerily surreal and visually stunning, Phantom Canyon mixes its gorgeous imagery with an equally beautiful, if not equally bizarre, score to create a true work of art.”
—Ann Arbor Film Festival
Production notes
2006 | 10:00 | 35mm | Black and white
Phantom Canyon is the first in a trilogy that examines the psychological terrain of women’s inner worlds in this metaphoric reckoning with a defining journey taken long ago. The film is composed of over 4000 6- x 8-inch collages. These were constructed from photocopied elements of 18th and 19th century engravings, primarily Dover clip art, combined with figures from Eadweard Muybridge’s Human and Animal Locomotion, first published in 1887.
The Muybridge figures were themselves collaged to create the movements necessary for the narrative flow of the film. The bodies of some with the heads of others, the arms of one on the torso of another, etc. The Phantom Canyon collages were then shot on an Oxberry animation stand using a 35mm Mitchell camera. There were texture layers added using transparencies.
The film took over four years to complete. Music and sound design were added in post-production by Bruce Odland.