Bruce Bickford, animator extraordinaire

Uploaded on Apr 23, 2008 by brighteyepics
8mm ANIMATION by Bruce Bickford
This is a rare glimpse at some of the early attempts made by Bruce Bickford to create stop-motion animation in the mid-1960s. Bickford is best known for his collaborations with Frank Zappa in the 1970s and has since influenced generations of animators with his startlingly original vision.

Wikipedia: Bruce Bickford (animator)
Bruce Bickford (born Seattle, 1947) is a maker of animated films who works primarily in clay animation. From 1974 to 1980 he collaborated with Frank Zappa. Bickford's animation was featured extensively in the Frank Zappa videos Baby Snakes and The Dub Room Special. Zappa also released a video titled The Amazing Mr. Bickford, which was entirely composed of Bickford animations set to a soundtrack of Zappa's orchestral music.

Bickford's animations depict surreal scenes based on his unique worldview. Often outwardly seeming to be somewhat disconnected from the world around him, Bruce Bickford's work is extremely subjective in its content and concepts, making for some disturbing and shocking imagery. Much of his video work depicted fast-moving, fluid-like transformations of human figures and disfigured faces into odd beasts on surreal structural settings with impressive camera effects (moving around within his stop-motion animation).

His life and work were featured in the 2004 biographical documentary film Monster Road, directed by Brett Ingram, which has won numerous film festival awards and garnered acclaim in many countries.

official web site: Bruce Bickford

YouTube channel: Bright Eye Pictures: Brett Ingram

official web site: Bright Eye Pictures: Brett Ingram

Bright Eye Pictures: Monster Road
Monster Road is a feature length documentary exploring the wildly fantastic worlds of legendary animator Bruce Bickford. Tracing the origins of Bickford's iconoclastic worldview, the film journeys back to Bickford's childhood in a competitive household during the paranoia of the Cold War and examines his relationship with his father, George, who is facing the onset of Alzheimer's Disease.

Monster Road premiered at the 2004 Slamdance Film Festival where it won "Best Documentary," eventually screening at over 85 festivals around the world, winning sixteen awards before premiering on Sundance Channel in June 2005.

Uploaded on Nov 10, 2006 by brighteyepics
Monster Road Trailer
Trailer for award-winning feature documentary about the animation and life of Bruce Bickford. Directed by Brett Ingram. From Bright Eye Pictures.

YouTube: Baby Snakes by Frank Zappa (2:02)

YouTube: Frank Zappa - Dub Room Special [COMPLETE] (1:30:31)
The Dub Room Special is a film produced by Frank Zappa for direct-to-video release in October, 1982. The video combines footage from a performance at the KCET studios in Los Angeles on August 27, 1974, a concert performed at The Palladium, NYC on October 31, 1981, some clay animation by Bruce Bickford, and several interviews.

YouTube: The Amazing Mr Bickford by Frank Zappa (Full Movie / Film Complet) (52:01)
Zappa released this video "The Amazing Mister Bickford" in 1987, which was entirely composed of 1978 Bickford animations set to a soundtrack of Zappa's orchestral music.

2014-02-21

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