Video: 'Tripped in the Woods'

A film inspired by the woodland acid trip sequences in the memoir 'The Mad Artist: Psychonautic Adventures in the 1970s'. Shot in the actual location of one of the trips, it replicates the unique primal intensity of woodland tripping, using extensive muti-layered video effects and complementary sound design.

This seven-minute film is the first in a projected series of 'trippy' films, which in various ways will celebrate aspects of the psychedelic experience. Actually it came about as a happy accident, an afterthought. The footage was shot as part of a more extensive project -- an illustration of a reading of the first trip sequence in 'The Mad Artist' -- which would also involve some night shooting in other locations. I was unable to complete the night shooting in my available window, and now the trees have come into leaf, so it might all have to wait till next winter, as the trip takes place in December.

However, in playing about with the shot footage, I experimented with various visual effects and an idea sparked: to make a trippy film in its own right, independent of the text of the book, though guided by the experiences it describes. So ‘Tripped in the Woods’ evolved as a notional, subjective point-of-view trip film, involving no people and no words, only the wood itself, progressively metamorphosing by means of trippy visual effects and complementary sound design.