The Natural (2008) - Nicholas O'Brien
The Natural from Nicholas O'Brien on Vimeo.
The Natural is a video that juxtaposes the cinematic landscapes of contemporary blockbuster fantasy films and recent panoramic images from nature documentaries.
Panoramas, or cinematic landscapes, are typically used to simultaneously overwhelm audiences with breathtaking natural beauty and allow them to have a temporary break from a narrative. In other words, panorama's of this kind have become an abstract transitional space, where the fantastical becomes colossal, monumental, and somehow also serene.
By combining these two pools of footage, The Natural aims to investigate how our distinctions between "the real" and "the fictional" have become obscured by the virtual and transient visual economy that we thrive in.
Comment by Owen Mundy