Trains of Thought

Trains Of Thought is a 12-minute stop motion short commissioned by the Poulenc Trio for their 2017/18 season as a companion piece for Viet Cuong's Trains of Thought. Viet's music has a driving energy and playfulness that caught my imagination immediately. 

Viet was exploring stream of consciousness – the way an idea moves through the mind, picking up bits and pieces, constantly looping back on itself, adding new layers of richness and depth to the original thought. The Trio wanted to explore that idea visually using images to illuminate the theme rather than just telling a story with the music as background. 

Trains is constructed entirely of cut paper with found object details and props. This short has over 9,000 photographs and took nine months to construct and shoot. Much of the manipulation was done with tweezers.

See a video of the process