ANIMATED FEED: SODAGREEN STORY - Directed by Muh Chen

蘇打綠 故事 - Sodagreen Story from Grass Jelly on Vimeo.

The theme of this song's lyrics is actually started from expressing the lyricist's messy mood sensed from the autumn scenery before his eyes. The feeling gradually becomes cheerful and elastic because he slowly understands what he yearned for is a peaceful and tranquil life. After all, life is like a dream. He realized that he should follow his fate and live a free and unfettered life, rather than concerning about life burdens and worries.

The theme actually covers a lot of Oriental philosophical thinking. The first major topic of the thinking is originated from Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring, an ancient Chinese prose written over 1,500 years ago. It depicts a land hidden from the outside world called "Peach Blossom Spring" and it’s a land which all Chinese people are yearning for. There is no pollution in the land and it’s just like “Utopia”, a beautiful place which is hard to exist in the world. The land is also known as the Chinese peoples’ collective spiritual sustenance. The second major topic of the thinking is derived from the penultimate sentence of the lyrics, saying "Shall not be affected by windswept, rain or shine." It’s from a very famous ancient Chinese poet Su Dong Po's poem to describe a person experiencing the ups and downs of life and finally adapts to it, feeling open-minded and comfortable. The third major topic of the thinking is called “Zhuāng Zhōu mèng dié” in Chinese and it means that “Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly”. It’s a famous ancient Chinese fable come from the Chapter 2 "Discussion on Making All Things Equal" of ZhuangZi’s philosophical book. ZhuangZi was a great ancient Chinese philosopher. He thought that if the human beings can break the boundaries between life and death, or even the boundaries between things and the human beings, then the human beings will gain the true happiness of life. His philosophical thinking was written and manifested in an ethereal manner, so it’s often cited by the philosophers and writers all over the world.

At the very beginning, we were really tormented by how to reveal the concepts described above using video images. It’s because on the one hand, we have to make it simple and easy to understand, but on the other hand, it can’t be too straightforward, or it will lose the unique Chinese romance. After countless idea generation and data collection, we decided to use the “Myriad Year Clock” (Self-ringing Bell), a precious collection of the Beijing Palace Museum, as the basis of our primary visual presentation. Collocated with the Facial Scanning Technology and rendered in full CG animation, it helps us breakthrough time and space constraints. This way we are finally able to tell a unique Oriental fantasy fable. Meanwhile, the abundant mechanical structure of a Myriad Year Clock as well as its rich historical significance gave us plenty space to fully elaborate our visualization and imagination, creating a brand new Oriental vision.


Client：Universal Music Taiwan 台灣環球唱片公司
Willlin 林暐哲音樂社

Production House：Grass Jelly Studio 仙草影像工作室
Director：Muh Chen 陳奕仁
Associate Director：Showy 林修毅
Executive Producer：Yi-Chien Lee 李依蒨
Lead Designer：Weiting Chen 陳威廷
VFX Supervisor：Ming-Yuan Chuan 全明遠


Modeling:
Chia-Hua Yu 游佳華
E.T Liu 劉熙真
Hsiao Han Tseng 曾筱涵
Nigel Huang 黃勗
Weiting Chen 陳威廷
Shu-Min Wu 吳姝旻
Pony Liu 劉享姵
Winson Chao 趙玟傑
Ming-Yuan Chuan 全明遠
Li Kang 李康
Jing-Kai Yan 顏靖凱
Wei-Shin Wang 王偉燊

Textureing:
Chia-Hua Yu 游佳華
E.T Liu 劉熙真
Hsiao Han Tseng 曾筱涵
Nigel Huang 黃勗
Weiting Chen 陳威廷
Shu-Min Wu 吳姝旻
Pony Liu 劉享姵
Winson Chao 趙玟傑
Ming-Yuan Chuan 全明遠
Li Kang 李康

Animation:
Weiting Chen 陳威廷
Nigel Huang 黃勗
Chia-Hua Yu 游佳華
Hsiao Han Tseng 曾筱涵
Winson Chao 趙玟傑
Li Kang 李康

Lighting:
E.T Liu 劉熙真
Chia-Hua Yu 游佳華
Hsiao Han Tseng 曾筱涵
Nigel Huang 黃勗
Ming-Yuan Chuan 全明遠

Compositing:
Ming-Yuan Chuan 全明遠
Weiting Chen 陳威廷
Chia-Hua Yu 游佳華
Nigel Huang 黃勗
Hsiao Han Tseng 曾筱涵
Shu-Min Wu 吳姝旻

Actor：彭文星 Dantol Peng

Date:2013.12