The following clip shows some of the visual effects I created for Marie-Pierre Jaury’s documentary on Wayne Shorter. The idea behind all this was to present Shorter as an infinitely-wise alien bringing love, music and originality to the planet Earth.

None of the effects shots were planned during shooting, so all compositing was done by hand in After Effects.

My favorite shot is the one that nobody notices when watching the film (which is unfortunately an indicator of a successful effect): the disappearing orchestra behind the bass player, John Patitucci. The idea here was to cut between two performances of the same composition (Over Shadow Hill Way), starting with a full-orchestra rendition and transitioning smoothly to the quartet-only performance. This was achieved by masking the foreground by hand, frame by frame (a couple of days’ work), and then carefully cutting to the close-up shot of Patitucci.

In the Zhejiang province of China there was a mountain inhabited by faeries. One day, an uncautious carpenter, Wang Zhi, went up the mountain in search of wood. Coming over a group of people gathered round a Go board, he joined them to watch the game. Sitting down, Wang Zhi gently leaned his axe against a rock.

One of the company gave him a prune to eat. The moves made during the game were of unsurpassable beauty. Wang Zhi lost himself completely in it. Suddenly, one of the spectators turned to him and asked if he shouldn’t be thinking about getting home at some point.

Startled, he reached for his axe, but it crumbled to dust at the touch of his hand. Returning to the village, he came across a man he had never met. The man pointed to a statue and said: “This is a statue erected to the memory of Wang Zhi, who disappeared one hundred years ago.”

(The legend of Ranka mountain)