Rob Carter’s stop-motion paper animation film, Metropolis, is like “a pop-up book on speed.” The nine-minute stop motion animation chronicles the urban expansion of Charlotte, North Carolina from a Native American trading post to a sprawling megalopolis.
This clip is the last three minutes of the film, showing the last 70 years of a city’s development and projecting an apocalyptic future.
From Vimeo:
Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, primarily due to the continuing influx of the banking community, resulting in an unusually fast architectural and population expansion that shows no sign of faltering despite the current economic climate. … Ultimately the video continues the city development into an imagined hubristic future, of more and more skyscrapers and sports arenas and into a bleak environmental future. It is an extreme representation of the already serious water shortages that face many expanding American cities today; but this is less a warning, as much as a statement of our paper thin significance no matter how many monuments of steel, glass and concrete we build.
The message is good but the artistry is awesome. It’s amazing that someone found such a unique way of presenting urban development, especially in a time when we have so much technology at hand.
Thanks Thomas. I agree that the artistry is amazing. The combination of the talent, technique and time involved make the message even more compelling.