The Passenger

The Passenger – Chris Jones

I had seen some early work in progress animations on this project back in 2001 while on another course and had completely forgotten about it. Skip forward 11 years and I saw the finished thing for the first time a few months ago. (Albeit 6 years after it was completed) But sweet mother of Jesus…. This thing is a true masterpiece and it’s done by one person?!?!

  The film itself is amazing for several reasons. Both the artistic/story side of the film and the technical implications required to produce something like this make my brain melt. Artistically, it has a stunningly moody tone throughout with a load of suspense building. I tend not to get sucked into films so much these days, mainly thanks to my techy brain not being able to turn off. I need to watch the switch between forward and inverse kinematics on a characters hand as it touches something, rather than watching movements as a whole. But this thing gripped me. 7 minutes after starting, I finally remembered to breathe... It’s got all the ingredients to make an awesome animation. And these aren’t supermarket own brand ingredients, these are home grown, free range, top notch ingredients. It was all chucked into the digital mixing bowl and cooked for 8 years by master chef Chris Jones. But enough with the cooking analogy…  It’s got a perfect balance of suspense and humour to make the 7 minutes thoroughly enjoyable; all of which has been pulled off using beautiful animation. This takes me onto the techy stuff. This guy has done this alone. The whole thing… Concept, modelling, rigging, animating, lighting, rendering, compositing and all the other ‘ing-s’ involved in making a film. Yes, it’s taken him 8 years, but it’s still unbelievable. 





Watching films like this, especially while I’m in the process of making a film, singlehandedly myself, puts me in a difficult position. It has created a fine line between inspirational and horribly crushing. Given all the time in the world and a cook book full of food analogies that Delia Smith would be proud of, I’m not sure if I could create something like The Passenger. Ultimately though, it must be inspiring. I want to do what Chris Jones did.