This is a really interesting concept that I’ve never seen before. Animator Skip Battaglia posted up his 1997 music video for the song “Taki Dom” performed by the poetry performance group F’loom, but he uploaded it in two versions: One is just the original video, the other is the video with a director’s commentary track overlaid on it. Embedded above is the video with commentary and the original is below. Skip discusses the origins of this project and the process of actually making it. Give it a listen, it’s really interesting.

Hearing the commentary was an extra bonus for me personally as Skip was one of my film professors — one of my favorite film professors in fact — when I attended the Film/Video program at the Rochester Institute of Technology from 1988 to 1992. I haven’t been back to RIT since I moved away from Rochester, so it was really nice to hear his voice again. Plus, I always found listening to his working process — even though I wasn’t majoring in animation — to be very instructive in thinking about things in new, imaginative ways.

Skip made this particular video after I graduated, so this is the first time I’ve seen it. It’s more abstract than most of his other films I’ve seen and it clearly doesn’t have a story. However, I really like how the flickering images aren’t timed exactly to the beat of the a capella music, but it flutters along with a similar rhythm so that the visuals and music compliment each other nicely — in a crazy, frenetic kind of way. Also, there’s no clear reason that the visuals have to revolve around a chicken, except maybe that the music features a lot of hard “ch” sounds.

To learn more about Skip, visit his official website and the RIT Film & Animation program site.

And, as promised, here’s the original video sans commentary: