SNAPSHOT
Armed with a camera drone, I travelled to Utah to capture the alienesque landscape of the desert on film. …Like many people, I’ve always wanted to visit Mars. But, it’s so far away. Last month I did the next best thing: I traveled to the deserts of Southern Utah. The landscapes there are otherwordly. Desolate. Stark. Abandoned. Millions of miles of dry, dusty red rock. You can truly get a sense of the millions of years of wind and water it’s taken to form the terrain. (synopsis via Laughing Squid)
For a film that only runs for 1 1/2 minutes and is dialogue free save for some command centre commentary, The Visitor leaves one hell of an evocative impression.
Telling the story of an astronaut exploring an alien world, it uses what Laughing Squid calls “the “active track” feature on a DJI Mavic Air drone” to turn the desert of southern Utah inside the famed Monument Valley into an alien landscape that is unutterably beautiful and yet desperately, poignantly lonely.
It’s an absolutely astonishingly transportive piece of work by Australian filmmaker and designer Pete Majarich that leaves you feeling as if you are on the planet with the intrepid explorer though from an entirely different, almost god-like vantage point.
THE VISITOR — A Short Film from Pete Majarich on Vimeo.